A biography for Guillermo del Torohasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“Monsters are evangelical creatures 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.'”
“Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever.”
“It is unnatural to deny effort, adversity, and pain.”
“Most of the time - in 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone' - I'm talking about my childhood.”
“I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.”
“I don't think that Argentinian cinema is well-known outside Argentina the way it should be.”
“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.”
“A lot of Mexican Catholic dogma, the way it's taught, it's about existing in a state of grace, which I found impossible to reconcile with the much darker view of the world and myself, even as a child.”
“I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others.”
“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.”
“Love is love. And it's much better than hatred and fear.”
“Well I think effects are tools.”
“I'm fortunate enough that my personal life falls into whack with my professional life. My kids love visiting the sets; they love the monsters.”
“I'm always very, very careful when the movies happen and where they happen.”
“I like monsters, and when the monster is a superhero, it's a byproduct. Like Hellboy, the Hulk, Man-Thing, Swamp Thing, Sandman, Constantine, Demon, Dr. Strange, Spectre, Deadman. Those are the superheroes I followed as a kid religiously.”
“I say making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit. Sometimes you get more bread, sometimes less bread, but you always get shit." (Guardian interview 2006)”
“I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.”