The emotions of the actors are better when they understand the chronological factors that are adding to the story.

At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view.

I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.

To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial.

I have fantastic ideas.

I started developing 'The Revenant' before 'Birdman.'

You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life.

I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.

My father had a difficult relationship with success, maybe because he never obtained it. But he was very wise about it because he observed how you can become rotten fruit once you get power.

I'm overwhelmed by the pain in the world; I'm affected by the news very much, and adding that to my work was becoming a little bit too much.

We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.

It's more enjoyable for me to know that life is finite. Knowing that, I would like to go to a party. When you get to the holidays, if you think that the holidays will be forever, you just take it for granted. But, if you know that you have just three days at the beach, you will be so happy to be there every day.

Always when you are doing films, the themes swallow you in one way or another.

I have ADD. I can't pay attention to one thing too long.

I think musically.

When you live in a city, as I do, where violence is really in the streets, and people die every day, there's nothing funny about it.

I can't understand the conditions of a corporate product being designed and getting millions. I admire it, it's great, but I don't know how to do that. I have to have the wheel.

I have a bad reputation, I guess.

I love Sam Mendes, but I went to see 'Spectre' with my kid, and the opening scene of the Dia de Muertos party, with this kind of tropical music, in downtown Mexico City, with all these people dancing like it's the Rio de Janeiro carnival... I had to laugh.

If I had been at an assembly line for films, I don't know if I would be the best driver. I think I would have crashed the car.

I do think that the emotional weight of 'Biutiful' has blinded some viewers to the beauty and complexity of the film.

Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.

Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'

Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.

For me, the most important thing that I have to accomplish is to be a good father. That's the most difficult challenge of my life. That's the most important thing for me, more than films.

I am not a depressive person at all, but I reflect a lot on my life, and life in general, from the perspective of death.

Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.

Freedom comes with a lot of responsibility. When you are by yourself, you have to develop a third eye.

I leave the story room to grow into what the movie is driving me to do.

What good is making a jewel if nobody see it? But cost depends on the story. To get those performances in 'Biutiful,' you need that time. You need 60 takes in a scene and a year to edit. It's not realistic to do it any other way.

Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.

My duty is to make probable the improbable. If I tell you how I did it, I will ruin your experience.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

Everything is reason. If you don't have reason, you have nothing.

'Amores Perros' is three stories that interconnect in one moment, which is the car accident.

I have never met a superhero, but why are we so obsessed with superheroes?

When I was sixteen, I was an absolutely romantic guy. I fell in love every week. I mean, I was in love with everybody, but unfortunately, nobody was in love with me.

I can't imagine David Lean justifying why he went to the desert to shoot 'Lawrence of Arabia.'

I've never done a period piece or a comedy, and that could be something truly different for me.

When there's a good script, everybody circles.

I learned with 'Birdman' that it's liberating when you just lose yourself and go after something that terrifies you. The experience was so good.

When I talk about sad things, I talk about sad things.

There was so much fear after 9/11, and that fear caused people to make the wrong decisions.

As a Third World citizen, I always feel that I need to express my point of view. Sometimes the points of view of Third World countries are never expressed. We don't have that possibility, sometimes, to spread what we feel and how we see things.

When you do a film in a foreign language, you know there's a cost in it, that you know, unfortunately, the audiences of foreign language films have not been cultivated. There's a market, but the market has been reduced, unfortunately, and you know that when you're making a foreign language film, you're making a choice.

Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.

Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.

I think that people would like to, at all times, reject death and disease with technology.