What's hurting the U.S. economy is total government spending. The deficit is an indicator that the government is spending so much money that it can't even get around to stealing all of the money that it wants to spend. But the tip of the iceberg is not what hit the Titanic - it was the 90 percent of the iceberg under water.

The Republican Party and the conservative free market movement have been presidentially focused for too long.

The taxpayer group in every state is always - always referred to as nuts.

People who are willing to stick to a strong pro-life position aren't going to be pushed off a strong anti-tax position. For people who like to think in ideologically cohesive ways, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.

Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.

I was a math guy as a kid. I was really good at math. I wasn't particularly interested in it.

Less government, less regulation, lower taxes.

Our job is to make people free.

Stupider than France is not where we want to be on tax policy.

I'm not for no taxes. That would be an anarchist. I am for lower taxes.

Everyone would have bigger and safer cars if they didn't have those CAFE standards: corporate average fuel economy.

If you let people own their land, they take care of it. That's why privately owned land is always taken care of, and the parks look like cesspools. Nobody takes care of what everybody owns.

It would be unwise for the modern Republican Party to come across as hostile to immigration. That has been the losing position in American history for 200 years.

Historically, opposition to immigration in the United States has been racially and religiously motivated in the ugliest, nastiest way possible.

My goal in life is to get the federal government down to half its present size and under control, and then I can write murder mysteries.

Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.

Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.

Tax reductions are usually simpler and less distortive. I'm certainly willing to look at getting rid of tax deductions/credits, and go to dramatically reduced rates.

There are 100 different doors to come into the conservative movement. You can disagree with 99 of them, as long as you agree on one: more-limited government.

There is beauty and humility in imperfection.

Monsters are the patron saints of imperfection.

When I was a kid, monsters made me feel that I could fit somewhere, even if it was... an imaginary place where the grotesque and the abnormal were celebrated and accepted.

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 think love is the greatest force in the universe. It's shapeless like water. It only takes the shape of things it becomes.

Making a film is like raising a child. You cannot raise a child to be liked by everyone. You raise a child to excel, and you teach the child to be true to his own nature. There will be people who'll dislike your child because he or she is who they are, and there will be people who'll love your child immensely for the very same reason.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget.

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'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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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