Quotes from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I made commercials for corporations like Volkswagen and Coca-Cola, but I was always the one to write them, too, which was a very good exercise, because I learned to tell little stories.

if you want to be understood ...Listen.

We have always existed in different forms - carbon, oxygen, water, heat. Maybe Heaven is this brief period when the elements realize they're alive.

Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.

I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.

I want the camerawork to fit the narrative and tell the story from the point of view of the character, but sometimes, to be interacting with the sensations of the story, you almost become like a ghost, you know? Like, someone that is floating, observing, not really judging what's going on.

'21 Grams' is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected - literally, with the heart.

I think we are all connected in this world.

You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life.

I have always considered myself to be spiritual in a way that has less to do with religion and more with an awareness that you have, and the consciousness you have of being alive and the consciousness that you will be dead.

My father had a difficult relationship with success, maybe because he never obtained it. But he was very wise about it because he observed how you can become rotten fruit once you get power.

I think, unfortunately, everything is becoming about comfort, you know? A comfortable way to tell a story. The comfortable way, so that the audience will never be lost. A comfortable way to produce a film with green screens or without a lot of physical effort or losing control because of the weather or physical locations.

When you are shooting in a conventional way, you put nets around yourself. It's very hard to fall and hit the ground. You can always manipulate things to make it not embarrassing. If the scene is a little bit bad, you can polish it or even take it out. You can hide your mistakes.

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.

Innocence can be more powerful than experience.

I have always said that innocence is much more powerful than experience.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

'Russian Ark,' I adore - I almost cried at the end of that film, it's so beautiful.

I'm usually very critical of myself.

The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?

Irony became the head that bit its tail and then there is no way out.

We are the only alive creatures that are mortals; the animals are immortal, which is why they live stupidly. We are the only creatures that know that we will die, but that is a gift. It's important because we know we have to take advantage and squeeze life and understand why we're here in the first place.

Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.