Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe. ”

I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up. ”

I think that the best things come from thought, without thinking. I think that's the smartest use of the intelligence that we all have. ”

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory. ”

I'm usually very critical of myself. ”

At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view. ”

Yes, I am a Mexican, and I have a past and a culture. But what matters is the film itself, not where it was financed or cast. ”

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing. ”

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial. ”

I'm less interested in reality. I'm more interested in perception, the truth of the universe that we see. ”