Only by the sweat of my own brow. I am a totally working man.

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it, but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task.

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.

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 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.

You cannot dictate what people find funny, what people find attractive, or what people find scary. There is not a norm.

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

'Crimson' is written in a very particular style, and it's very precise in the way it graduates into a gothic romance. The souls that will connect with it will connect deeply.

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.

TV now, you have to plan it: you structure it for binge watching, meaning you structure the whole season like a three-act play. You have a first act - the first third of the season - second act is the middle third, and you structure it like that.

I think we live in a culture that is actually hedging all of it towards comfort and immediacy, things that scare me. All the things that they sell us as a way of life scare me.

Ultimately, you walk life side-by-side with death, and the Day of the Dead, curiously enough, is about life. It's an impulse that's intrinsic to the Mexican character.

I have said no to many, many Day of the Dead projects in the past, about 10 or 15, because every time I heard a take it was from someone who didn't know the celebration.

Insects are living metaphors for me. They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but also they are emotionless; they don't have any human or mammalian instincts. They'll eat their young at the drop of a hat; they can eat your house! There's no empathy - none.

I believe that we, every day, 24-7, all the days of our lives, we are, all of us, agents of construction and agents of destruction.

I think that evil is a spiritual engine in our world, our lives, our universe, that functions in order to create good.

I think looking is the essential act of loving. Brothers, fathers and sons, lovers, whatever. What you do when you love someone is look at that person as that person is.

I'm always very, very careful when the movies happen and where they happen.

There's nothing more political than fantasy.

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.

I have a very promiscuous relationship with all my objects.

I don't think there is life beyond death. I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do.