I think the greatest giant insect movie ever made is 'Them!'

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

I started seeing in the monsters as a more sincere form of religion because the priests were not that great, but Frankenstein was great.

When I did 'Mimic,' it was such a difficult experience to try to make. Believe it or not, I did try to make a really adult giant bug movie. And then, in the course of the process, it kind of died a horrible death and gave birth to the movie that exists now, which now, in retrospect, I like. But it's not the movie I set out to do.

Everything I do, I do it with the hope that people will watch it more than twice. Whether it's 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Pacific Rim' or the opening of 'The Simpsons,' I do it with that hope.

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.

I'd love to come back as the most annoying ghost ever.

The creature from the black lagoon - I drew that creature almost every day, two, three times a day, for probably my first ten years of life, you know.

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.

The way they control a population is by pointing at somebody else - whether they're gay, Mexican, Jewish, black - and saying, 'They are different than you. They're the reason you're in the shape you're in. You're not responsible.' And when they exonerate you through vilifying and demonizing someone else, they control you.

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 think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.

It is unnatural to deny effort, adversity, and pain.

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've been going through immigration all my life, and I've been stopped for traffic violations by cops, and they get much more curious about me than the regular guy. The moment they hear my accent, things get a little deeper.

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.

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget.

In Mexico, you're close to death all the time.

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

Every movie, I complicate. I make the hard choices. I remember when I was pitching 'Pan's Labyrinth:' An anti-fascist fairy tale set in Civil War Spain, where the girl dies at the end. It's not easy.

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

I'm not that interested in recreating reality. I'm interested in recreating an emotional truth.

I love monsters the way people worship holy images. To me, they really connect in a very fundamental way to my identity.

I wrote a screenplay for 'The Witches,' which Alfonso Cuaron was producing, but we couldn't get it made! The studio just wouldn't greenlight that movie. It's my favorite Roald Dahl book, 'The Witches,' because I grew up with my grandmother a lot of the time, and the relationship between the boy and the grandmother speaks volumes to me.