Guillermo Del Toro Quotes

Nora said, "I thought vampires drank virgin blood. They hypnotize ... they turn into bats ... " Setrakian said, "They are much romanticized. But the truth is more ... how should I say?" "Perverse," said Eph. "Disgusting," said Nora. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Not my mother. Just a trick. Never deal with the devil - that much he knew. Live like a king. Right. The king of a ruined world. The king of nothing. But down here, he was alive. An agent of chaos. Caca grande. The shit in the Master's soup. Gus's reverie was interrupted by footfalls in the tunnels. He went to the door and saw artificial light coming around the corner. Fet came first, Goodweather behind him. Gus had seen Fet a month or two before, but the doctor he had not seen in quite some time. Goodweather looked the worst he'd ~ Guillermo Del Toro

We are such skeptics that we find it difficult to believe in God and angels and a spiritual afterlife, but a moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to believe in something beyond that. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

As a child that was disenfranchised from everything, and that was in a world that was the wrong size, run by the wrong people, the wrong morale and the wrong rules, I felt completely outside of that, and I wanted some measure of control, and the measure of control I found was through fear. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Man should be better than monsters.

Ah, but who are the monsters? ~ Guillermo Del Toro

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Miriam Sacher had survived polio as a child. To Abraham, she was simply the most exquisite little bird who could not fly. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

By God, Giles thinks, it's true: They are not so different from each other. Giles might still, under the right light, bathed in the right water, be beautiful, too. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The reality is that I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget. That no matter what budget you're doing, you should be dreaming bigger than the budget you have, and then it's a matter of reigning it in to the reality. You try to make things count. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I think part of making movies is dealing with restrictions of freedom and budget. I'd rather deal with restrictions of budget. It's better to feel free within any budget. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I'm a lapsed altar boy. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

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

It's important for little girls to know not every story has to be a love story and for boys to know that soldiers aren't the only ones to triumph in war. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

In the face of such terror and dehumanization, human passion itself was an act of defiance. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It's like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it's gorgeous. You feel very exposed. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Her mother said fairy tales didn't have anything to do with the world, but Ofelia knew better. They had taught her everything about it. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

People who have lived their whole lives feeling half-complete. Who never truly fit anywhere in the world. Who never understood why they were here, or what they were meant for. Who never answered the call, because they never heard it. Because nothing ever spoke to them. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Producing is great because you learn. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

He paused in the hallway, sniffing the air. He scowled, sniffed some more. He pressed an intercom button on the wall.
"Betty, I distinctly smell sewage. Could you get a plumber out here ASAP?"
Several curly hairs fluttered in the air after he was gone.
I clutched at the arm of the dentist chair.
"This isn't a joke, Tub! I'm in trouble. We're all in trouble, the whole town, the whole world! You have no clue. You have no idea what kind of things we're dealing with here. There's a whole land of
~ Guillermo Del Toro

I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I think that in the past, in the '50s and '60s, after the existentialists and beatniks and hippie movements, the big deal was, Don't sell out. We live in a society that by virtue of the speed we communicate and sell, everything sells. The danger is buying in; that your concern becomes success, rather than fulfillment. They're two different beasts, and my feeling is that you should seek fulfillment. You should not measure your worth in how much you have or how popular you are, but how happy you are with what you do. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I love the idea of creating a sort of nuanced portrait of kids that they're not all perfect. They're kind of misfits but not in a picturesque, hip way, they're really, really kids that are not entirely great. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

This is what the beginning of the end of the world will look like ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Libraries don't keep secrets; they reveal them. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Zombie Sky. No: Zombies of the Eclipse. Zombies of the Occultation. Occult Zombies from the Planet Moon! ~ Guillermo Del Toro

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

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

At some point, in order to gain his identity, the kid goes "I'm not my dad" or "I'm not my mom." ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The way I see film is I think film is like going out to dinner. I feel it's a banquet. You don't want to have the same food you have at home. You want to go and eat a fantastic Chinese meal or Italian or Greek. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist ... Reason over emotion is bullshit, absolute bullshit ... We suffocate ourselves in rules. I find fantasy liberating. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Everything in our universe is ciphered and to know the cipher is to know the thing - and to know the thing is to command it. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I really wanted the house to be a character. And I knew, I said, I'll produce that one, but if I direct it, I need to build a house. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

She realizes that, down here, hate has no purpose. Down here, you embrace your foes until they become your friends. Down here, you seek not to be one being, but all beings, and all at once, God and Chemosh and everything in between. The change in her isn't only mental. It's physical, of skin and muscle. Yes, she has arrived. She is full. She is perfect. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh– whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish– thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

What is life, in the end, but a series of small victories and larger failures? ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Eph too had been turned. Not from human to vampire, but from healer to slayer. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

And yet one carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Well I think effects are tools. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Trolls have existed on this planet for as long as humans. This is what I was told and what I translated to Tub. The first mention of them in recorded history is from ninth-century Norway, when the nefarious creatures began showing up in song, verse, and bedtime stories to keep misbehaving children in line. According to Norse folklore, trolls are one of the Dark Beings, the purest embodiments of evil, and they scurried from between the toes of Ymir, the mythic six-headed Frost Giant whose murdered body became the universe in which we live; his bones became the mountains, his teeth boulders, and so forth. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Is it ... can we ... is it safe?"
Tub checked the lot but he seemed unconcerned.
"Coach Lawrence nabbed him for practice. We live to fight another day, soldier."
"No ... I mean, the thing ... is it ... ?"
Tub frowned.
"The thing. Hmmm. Can you be more specific?
I clutched at the bumper and raised myself to unsteady feet. I patted the truck bed, taking solace in the cake of dust. It was real; I was not caught in a nightmare. I smeared the dust with my fingers and smelled it.
"If you lick that, we're no longer friends," Tub said. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I went to a festival pretending to work as a journalist to get free tickets and interview people I really admired. I remember one of these people was Guillermo del Toro. ~ Juan Antonio Bayona

I believe, as a producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film that really resonates. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

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. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I think when you get all the money and all the freedom, rarely do you get a good movie out of it or a movie that you're proud of. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

When you see something or experience something extraordinary, you can't go back to normal ... I think that that's the way I see the supernatural-as happening in mundane circumstances or to people who are unprepared. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge
the abyss. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

It's a terrible thing, isn't it? To be dragged under? ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The most intelligent of creatures often make the fewest sounds. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I think the three Mexican directors - Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro - gave all of us foreign, and particularly Latino, directors a big break. ~ Patricia Riggen

I believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

...the reality of the days washed away the possibilities of the past, and time moved on. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I think Hollywood has a habit of developing 100 times more than they actually shoot. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I'm serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city's pesky troll problem, and you're not exactly going to get a lot of people saying, 'Gee, thanks for the warning.' It'll spread faster than mono. You think things are tough for us now? Jim, this will be the end. I'm sorry if you had a crazy nightmare. I really am. But I can't let you ruin our lives. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

What is a ghost?
A tragedy condemned to repeat
itself time and again?
A moment of pain, perhaps.
Something dead which
still seems to be alive.
An emotion suspended in time.
Like a blurred photograph.
Like an insect trapped in amber.
A ghost.
That's what I am. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

There's nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life, and horror is a really great boundary. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

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

I love the creation of these things - I love the sculpting, I love the coloring. Half the joy is fabricating the world, the creatures. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I only produce directors and movies that I have a lot in common with. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Your heart is uncomplicated. It knows what it knows and acts accordingly. Greater wisdom is hard to find. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

You have to believe the magic to see it. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness - ~ Guillermo Del Toro

People think you're like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you're hustling, you're desperate, you're panicked and you're horrified. The movie you think you're going to do next, you don't do. The movie you think you're never going to do, you make. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Normally my clients were my mother, my grandmother, and my dad, and I would sell them the issues with a great color cover. There was a story I remember called 'The Invader,' and it had an invisible dome covering a city, with a giant tentacled monster eating everybody in sight, and people trying to drill a hole in the dome. And I did these epic Prismacolor pencil illustrations and sold out the three issues to my captive audience. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I guess a vampire doesn't have much need for good hygiene. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

You deserve better than this. You deserve people who value you. You deserve to go somewhere where you can be proud of who you are. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

THE THING WAS AN EXPERT IN HORROR, BUT THIS HUMAN HORROR INDEED EXCEEDED ANY OTHER POSSIBLE FATE. NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT WAS WITHOUT MERCY, BUT BECAUSE IT WAS ACTED UPON RATIONALLY AND WITHOUT COMPULSION. IT WAS A CHOICE. THE KILLING WAS UNRELATED TO THE LARGE WAR, AND IT SERVED NO OTHER PURPOSE THEN EVIL. MEN CHOSE TO DO THIS TO OTHER MEN AND INVENTED REASONS AND PLACES AND MYTHS IN ORDER TO SATISFY THEIR DESIRE IN A LOGICAL AND METHODICAL WAY. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

But Felix was no longer Felix. He was a vampire motherfucker. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I'm the freaky version of that superhero who says, wherever there is injustice, I shall be there. Whenever there is a difficult project, I'd like to be there. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

She holds him, he holds her, they hold each other, and all is dark, all is light, all is ugliness, all is beauty, all is pain, all is grief, all is never, all is forever. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I was directing before I knew it was called that. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The only thing you can do as an artist is to come to the world, see what no one is doing, and leave behind one or two things that wouldn't have happened without you. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I've always been a big fan of Guillermo del Toro, 'Pan's Labryinth' blew me away. The stories and the worlds that he's created, he is truly a visionary! ~ Robin Atkin Downes

Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Without context, things are not scary. Without context, like humor, horror doesn't work. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Imagine, there is almost no possibility for a foreign language film to be distributed in America right now. That doesn't just make the industry poorer, it makes the landscape of cinema poorer, in America. The impossibility to get a good release on a really good European, Latin American, Asian movie is a tragedy. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

There are a lot of period movies where they say, 'This is a portrait of Lady Whatever.' And it's done in like a 1950s or 60s style. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I have my library separate from the family home, and every room is a different genre. The only room that I can guarantee I've read everything is the horror room. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

If film making is magic, there's a difference between close up magic and David Copperfield. If you're doing close up magic, which independent filmmakers do, it is a very delicate craft, interpersonal relationship, and being able to enrapture a very small audience. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

To all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

For in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

It is not faith that distinguishes our real leaders. It is doubt. Their ability to overcome it. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Kelly was not going to remove her glasses. No matter what the television said about it being safe to do during the 'totality'. The television also told her she wouldn't age if she bought expensive creams and pills. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Coffee - a barbaric drink. That poor, tortured bean. All that fermenting and husking and roasting and grinding. And what is tea? Tea is dried leaves rehydrated. Just add water, Mrs. Strickland. All living things need water. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I only produce movies that have something stylistically different, so that I can learn from the experience of producing. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Hidden in every limitation lies an opportunity. And for every obstacle you face, there is a simple and perfect solution, creatively. And your work is to find it. Where it gets tough is you need to fucking find it in five minutes. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

My life is a suitcase. I am the traveling Mexican. ~ Guillermo Del Toro