To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.

There is art and beauty and power in the primal images of fantasy.

There is beauty and humility in imperfection.

I truly try to create beauty and reflection and all of that as conscientiously and judiciously and minutely as I can.

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

I had nightmares as a kid. As an adult, I have very prosaic dreams.

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

I love producing other people's work, but presenting is a very serious business. It's a marriage.

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

More and more, as I grow older, I find myself looking for inspiration in painting, illustration, videogames, and old movies.

The way I love monsters is a Mexican way of loving monsters, which is that I am not judgmental. The Anglo way of seeing things is that monsters are exceptional and bad, and people are good. But in my movies, creatures are taken for granted.

To me, movies are books. They are texts to be consulted.

I'm very grateful of my life and my career and the movies I've been able to make.

There is a heavy Mexican Catholic streak in my movies, and a huge Mexican sense of melodrama. Everything is overwrought, and there's a sense of acceptance of the fantastic in my films, which is innately Mexican. So when people ask, 'How can you define the Mexican-ness of your films?' I go, 'How can I not?' It's all I am.

I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.

As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.

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 would have killed to do 'Beauty And The Beast' at Warners, which went away. I would have killed to do 'The Witches' at Warners that went away. God knows there are many, many of them. All I can do is diligently do the screenplay, diligently do the design work, deliver a budget, and then await a decision.