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

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

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.

Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.

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 believe that we will elevate and differentiate the discourse of cinema the more we discuss image creation in specific terms.

Any actor I admire and enjoy working with - Sergi Lopez as the bad guy in 'Pan's Labyrinth,' or the little girl who played young Mako in 'Pacific Rim,' it makes no difference - I like actors with a very strong centre.

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.'

I was a kid when I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with that universe. I didn't have the acumen to say the prose is old or the prose is too complex. I just fell in love with Jane's very lonely soul, much the same way I fell in love with Frankenstein's creature for the same reason. Those old souls exist in every decade in every century.

You cannot convince a Buddhist to become a Protestant any more than you can convince a person who embraces realism as the highest form of art that fantasy is an equally important manifestation. It's impossible.

I have 7,000 DVDs and Blu-rays. I have thousands of books - thousands - and roughly 15,000 comic books or something like that, hundreds of books about different art movements - the symbolists, the dadaists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the impressionists - you know, that I consult before I start every movie.

If you want to know how to handle a crew, it's great to be part of a crew.

I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.

I saw a martyr in the Wolf Man, who is the very moving essence of outsiderness, with which I identified fully.

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 having a lot of fun on Twitter, tweeting about books.

I'm a book guy first, and my education came from two encyclopedias. One was an encyclopedia of health, so I became morbidly obsessed with anatomy, and I thought I had trichinosis, an aneurism, jaundice! And then an encyclopedia of art.

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.

Most of the time - in 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone' - I'm talking about my childhood.

I have a schizophrenic career. I have 'Cronos' and 'The Devil's Backbone' on one hand, and then I have 'Blade 2' and 'Mimic' on the other.

I think that most of the monsters I dream of, I dreamt of as a child.

If you give an actor a green screen, the shot may work, but that green screen will not inspire you on the set as a director or as an actor.

I'm a lapsed altar boy.

For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.

When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.

I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.

Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined.

I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.

Well I think effects are tools.

In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert... if it's too loud, you're too old.

I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others.

I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films.

I was directing before I knew it was called that.

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

There are two levels of vampirism: one is the regular vampire, which is just like it has always been; and then there's the super vampires, which are a new breed we've created.

It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism.

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.

I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit.

I think Hollywood has a habit of developing 100 times more than they actually shoot.

I hope to continue doing TV, and I think that what I've learned on 'The Strain' will come in handy.

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.

Monsters are evangelical creatures for me.

Love is love. And it's much better than hatred and fear.

To me, the thing love and cinema have in common is that they are about seeing. The greatest act of love you can give to anyone is to see them exactly as they are. That's the greatest act of love because you wash away imperfections.

When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.

Every Sunday on Channel 6 in Guadalajara, where I lived, they dedicated most every Sunday to black-and-white horror films and sci-fi. So I watched them. I watched 'Tarantula.' I watched 'The Monolith Monsters.' I watched all the Universal library.

I want to live in a space that I designed, that is for me.

In the case of 'Shape Of Water,' I want it to feel like a song. I wanted people to come out of the movie humming the movie.

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.