110+ Guillermo del Toro Quotes On Animation, Fantasy And Surrealism

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican film director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist. He is best known for his acclaimed films, such as Pan's Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Crimson Peak. He has been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his work on The Shape of Water. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Guillermo del Toro on animation, fantasy, surrealism.

Top 10 Guillermo Del Toro Quotes

1. When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things
6. 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.
7. For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.
8. You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.
9. ...to all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone.
10. Your heart is uncomplicated. It knows what it knows and acts accordingly. Greater wisdom is hard to find.

Guillermo Del Toro Short Quotes

• What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.
• I'm a lapsed altar boy.
• You can only be a good father in relationship to your childhood.
• Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge--the abyss.
• Never fly commercial. That's the moral of this story.
• If you don't take it personally, the partnership between producers and directors is very intimate.
• The reality is that I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion.
• When you work with a great director, you can have a great partnership.
• Its a bit cloudy in London but people are already drinking out on the streets- God Bless the pubs.
• As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.

Guillermo del Toro Quotes About Horror.

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 believe, as a producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film that really resonates. — 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

For horror to work, you have to be afraid. You have to keep the monster in a black and white light. — Guillermo del Toro

I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it's really great. I don't like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it. — Guillermo del Toro

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

It’s as hard to explain as a sexual proclivity. Some guys like high-heeled shoes. I like horror. — Guillermo del Toro

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

There are two types of producing deals, and I've had both. I've produced over 20 movies now. You are either watching in horror, as the cars take the curve in the grand prix, or you're enjoying it. — Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Quotes About Movies

I try to find inspiration in books, paintings, illustrations and the one thing I try to avoid is just being inspired by other movies, because then you just are talking about movies in movies. I try to talk about movies that are culturally and spiritually a little more diverse. — Guillermo del Toro

When I see a short schedule, my question to the director is, are you really comfortable with this, or are you doing it to be a good boy? At the end, you only win the medal if the film is good, you don't win a medal if the movie is on time. — Guillermo del Toro

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. — 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

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

The movies that I do are in love with cinema, and I try to show that I am in love with cinema. I want them to be, in other ways, drinking from other sources. — Guillermo del Toro

I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit. — 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

Normally a period movie has a lot of problems with the graphics. They look modern made. — 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

Guillermo del Toro Quotes About Movie

Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined. — Guillermo del Toro

For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made. — Guillermo del Toro

Somebody said to me, in a very well-meaning way, at a screening, "We love the movie but it's too violent. If you tone down the violence you could reach a great audience of kids.". — Guillermo del Toro

I believe that pain can be a rite of passage into learning. I believe that the worse thing that can happen is the sin of banality and comfort. Those things are in my movies, but also my movies are quite the fruit of somebody who defines himself as an agnostic. — 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

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

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

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too. — Guillermo del Toro

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it. — Guillermo del Toro

There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of. — Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Quotes About Directing

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

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

I was directing before I knew it was called that. — Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Quotes About Hellboy

I always thought what if you took a myth of childhood like the tooth fairy and made it a central scary thing. We did it on Hellboy and we did it on 'Don't be afraid of the dark'. — Guillermo del Toro

They're getting more and more experience on what to expect, and the Hellboy audience is such a faithful and fanatic audience as I am, and you have to really be very open about what you do. — Guillermo del Toro

"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. — Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — 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

I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window. — 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

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

video games are the comic books of our time... It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia". — Guillermo del Toro

You may occasionally be hurt by the sort of cavalier cruelty of commentary if you go into online forums, so there’s definitely a maturity about not seeking validation from everyone, every single time. — 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

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

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

You think if you work hard enough, you can fix the precious things you've broken - rather than being careful with them in the first place. — Guillermo del Toro

I think once a Catholic, always a Catholic. You never escape. I still have Catholic guilt. It is in its basis a really powerful religion and a really strong set of beliefs. They permeate my work in many ways. — Guillermo del Toro

I thought the tooth fairy was a very creepy concept as a kid. "Put your tooth under the pillow." I was like "Why does someone want my teeth?". — Guillermo del Toro

I'm a movement Nazi. It used to be my way before. Now, in the last three projects. I found a way to let the actors find their comfort and still find the precision in the show. It's a change in me. — Guillermo del Toro

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. — Guillermo del Toro

When somebody says something I don't agree with, I say I'd rather not. It comes to the point where that is the strongest form of resistance. As a Mexican, it took me a long while to learn one word in English, "no". And that is the one word we have in common. — Guillermo del Toro

When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that's the route I usually want to go. — Guillermo del Toro

If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood. — Guillermo del Toro

If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer. — Guillermo del Toro

Ghosts are a metaphor that can be interpreted so many different ways. There's no ending to what you can do. You can make it a fun ghost story. You can make it a deeply disturbing, psychological ghost story. — Guillermo del Toro

...there's something about maternal love - it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is. — Guillermo del Toro

The idea for me is that if the movie connects with you the way I want it to connect with you, you should be experiencing both the horror and the wonder as a child would. From a child's point of view. When we're kids, brutality registers differently than when we are adults. Because as adults, we get too used to violence. — Guillermo del Toro

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

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

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

There is beautiful in the grotesque. — 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 believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world. — 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

Frankfurt, discussing a stuntman: He missed being killed in that shot be literally half an inch. — Guillermo del Toro

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

Well I think effects are tools. — Guillermo del Toro

I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others. — Guillermo del Toro

: There are only two on-buttons for fear, in any permutation you want. One is when something that shouldn't be is, meaning a presence. And, the other one is an absence. — Guillermo del Toro

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

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. — 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

With supernatural things, I have heard ghosts, but I've never seen ghosts. I do seek ghosts and I would love to see one, but I would crap my pants. — Guillermo del Toro

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

I love REAL set construction and think that sets are very important part of the storytelling and scope of a film. — 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

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

My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein. I'm going to misquote it horribly, but the monster says, "I have such love in me, more than you can imagine. But, if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear." — 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

It's the difference between a parable and a pamphlet. A parable discusses things that are relevant in the past, the future, and the present - regardless of the outcome in the present. A pamphlet, on the other hand, is completely concerned with affecting an outcome in the present, the most immediate present. — Guillermo del Toro

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. — Guillermo del Toro

You need to adjust your compass to an obtainable goal. — Guillermo del Toro

I think that during the shoot, you should never be there, unless something goes really wrong and as producer, you're responsible. The sign you did your job right is if you are not there. — Guillermo del Toro

I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films. — Guillermo del Toro

I have "fat-guy syndrome." If they give me $50 million to make a movie, I'll try to make it look like it cost a hundred. If they give me $60 million, I'll try to make it look like it cost $120. — Guillermo del Toro

Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person--it only adds the burden of panic — Guillermo del Toro

It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism. — Guillermo del Toro

You’ll meet her. She’s very pretty, even though sometimes she’s sad for many days at a time. You’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her. — Guillermo del Toro

When I stage a violent scene, I try for it to serve a purpose. I do love those things, the makeup effects. But I love them more with the monsters. I never was much of a gore guy. I've always enjoyed just creating monsters. — Guillermo del Toro

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

I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books, but I'd love to do one where one of the kids dies, or one of the main characters dies. I love for those things to have a little bit more tragedy. — Guillermo del Toro

The fairies in the ancient notion of fairies, they are not positive and cute and twinkly.They can be incredibly nasty or they can be incredibly benign. It's a really interesting mythology when you dig into it. — 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

I don't try to define the cosmos, I know it's unknowable, but I can understand my place in the world and my place in the universe through a mixture of Taoism, Catholicism, Zen or whatever I have at hand. — Guillermo del Toro

We're in three living groups, 'cause even after the world's ended some assholes still can't get along. — Guillermo del Toro

I think video games are going to completely take over storytelling in our society. Video games are not a fad. — Guillermo del Toro

The only true immortality is when you don't care if you die. The moment you stop giving credence to gain is when you become invulnerable to pain. — Guillermo del Toro

You have to believe the magic to see it. — Guillermo del Toro

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

I am the nice adversary, the guy that's going to ask the tough questions and is not going to be happy with the quick answer. — Guillermo del Toro

Life Lessons by Guillermo del Toro

1. Guillermo del Toro's work emphasizes the importance of embracing one's own unique perspective and creative voice. He often explores themes of fantasy, horror, and the supernatural, while also touching on important social issues.
2. Del Toro's films often explore the power of storytelling, and how it can be used to confront difficult topics and create a sense of understanding and empathy.
3. His films also celebrate the beauty of the unknown and the power of imagination, showing that even in the darkest of stories, there is hope and possibility.