I'm not that interested in recreating reality. I'm interested in recreating an emotional truth.

I think we live in a culture that is actually hedging all of it towards comfort and immediacy, things that scare me. All the things that they sell us as a way of life scare me.

I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.

The reason there's a 'Hellboy 2' is not because the studios were passionate about the first one; it's because the numbers made sense.

Every movie, I complicate. I make the hard choices. I remember when I was pitching 'Pan's Labyrinth:' An anti-fascist fairy tale set in Civil War Spain, where the girl dies at the end. It's not easy.

Shooting a horror story with kids, I always explain really simply. They may be scary to watch, but they're a lot of fun to shoot. You know, the kids have a great time shooting these movies. Whether you let them watch it is another matter.

It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism.

I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.

For me, real life is hard work. Making movies is like a vacation for my soul.

I have 7,000 DVDs and Blu-rays. I have thousands of books - thousands - and roughly 15,000 comic books or something like that, hundreds of books about different art movements - the symbolists, the dadaists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the impressionists - you know, that I consult before I start every movie.

I have a very promiscuous relationship with all my objects.

In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert... if it's too loud, you're too old.

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.

There is beauty and humility in imperfection.

The movie has to have some essence where you connect with it. The reason I'm doing 'Blade 2' and not 'Alien 4' is because I connect with the universe of 'Blade.' I don't connect with the universe of 'Alien.' Besides, I already did 'Alien 4': It's called 'Mimic.'

You cannot dictate what people find funny, what people find attractive, or what people find scary. There is not a norm.

I think when we wake up in the morning, we can choose between fear and love. Every morning. And every morning, if you choose one, that doesn't define you until the end... The way you end your story is important. It's important that we choose love over fear, because love is the answer.

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget.

For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.

There are two levels of vampirism: one is the regular vampire, which is just like it has always been; and then there's the super vampires, which are a new breed we've created.

I don't think that Argentinian cinema is well-known outside Argentina the way it should be.

I started seeing in the monsters as a more sincere form of religion because the priests were not that great, but Frankenstein was great.

You cannot convince a Buddhist to become a Protestant any more than you can convince a person who embraces realism as the highest form of art that fantasy is an equally important manifestation. It's impossible.

Monsters are evangelical creatures for me.

I've been going through immigration all my life, and I've been stopped for traffic violations by cops, and they get much more curious about me than the regular guy. The moment they hear my accent, things get a little deeper.

I want to live in a space that I designed, that is for me.

Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' was influenced by Lovecraft big time. He wanted to make his monsters Lovecraftian. But I think many other films have been influenced by Lovecraft - like 'Alien,' which is almost an outer-space version of 'At The Mountains Of Madness.'

I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.

As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.

Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.

I think love is the greatest force in the universe. It's shapeless like water. It only takes the shape of things it becomes.

I love what many of my contemporaries are doing, especially people like Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, P. T. Anderson, and Alfonso Cuaron.

What is scary to me is silly to somebody else. CG isn't scary to me. It's like comedy - comedy and horror are quite similar, in that there'll always be somebody who'll say, 'I don't think that was funny.' And it's the same with things that are meant to be scary.

I think the greatest giant insect movie ever made is 'Them!'

Every project that you write about or read about, it goes through years of hard work. We write a screenplay; we design. Then you submit those and the budget, and it's out of your hands.

I loved when the superhero genre crosses with horror. Morbius. Those are the guys I gravitated towards. Blade. So for me, to be interested in doing a superhero movie, it would need to be on the dark side or a Jack Kirby property. Kamandi, Demon, Mr. Miracle - I love any Kirby.

I don't think there is life beyond death. I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do.

I was directing before I knew it was called that.

When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.

When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.

I love the entire 'Constantine' mythology, the 'Dead Man' mythology, the Alex Holland 'Swamp Thing' mythology.

I'm always very, very careful when the movies happen and where they happen.

When I was a child, I was raised Catholic. Somewhere, I didn't fit with the saints and holy men. I discovered the monsters - in Boris Karloff, I saw a beautiful, innocent creature in a state of grace, sacrificed by sins he did not commit.

I love to travel, anywhere in the world. Wherever it is... India... Tibet... wherever. I'll go anywhere.

It's never hard to cast kids; it's only ever hard to direct them.

When I was a kid, monsters made me feel that I could fit somewhere, even if it was... an imaginary place where the grotesque and the abnormal were celebrated and accepted.

To me, the thing love and cinema have in common is that they are about seeing. The greatest act of love you can give to anyone is to see them exactly as they are. That's the greatest act of love because you wash away imperfections.

I think Roald Dahl had the rarest combination of talking to kids about complex emotions, and he was able to show you that the world of kids was sophisticated, complex, and had a lot more darkness than adults ever want to remember.

'Crimson' is written in a very particular style, and it's very precise in the way it graduates into a gothic romance. The souls that will connect with it will connect deeply.