Guillermo del Toro Quotes

The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.

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.

I love monsters. If I go to a church, I'm more interested in the gargoyles than the saints. I really don't care much about the idea of normal - that's very abstract to me. I think that perfection is practically unattainable but imperfection is right at hand. So that's why I love monsters: because they represent a side of us we should actually embrace and celebrate.

You have to believe the magic to see it.

In a world where we are so pragmatic and materialistic, fear is the only emotion that allows even a sophisticated person to believe in something beyond.

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

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.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple...when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us.

I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things

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.

"What makes a man a man?" a friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.

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

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

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.

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.

You can always go back to not making any money, and then you get the freedom. And I'm going to continue doing it, because it really is a fantastic sense of liberation.

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

I think we live our lives seeking the shortest route, the closest parking space - everything quick, cheap, fast. And it's not better. Two-thirds of the satisfaction of getting something is the process of getting it.

You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.

My life is a suitcase. I am the traveling Mexican.

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.

Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.

Night is real. Night is not an absence of light, but in fact, it is daytime that is a brief respite from the looming darkness.