I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

There are contemporary artists that I hate with all my heart. These are provocateurs that are without feeling. Where is the real emotion?

Thank you to Italy. That is a crazy country but beautiful.

There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.

The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot.

Wasting time is something that people do or feel all over the world, not just in Italy.

The fear of old age is something that one feels when they're younger. Once you get to being old, you're already there, so you don't even think about it anymore.

I don't use Twitter. I'm a serious person.

I usually don't say anything to the actors. It works better for me because when they come to the set, they are at the same time scared and excited because they are not well aware of what will happen.

I hibernate. I hibernate until the next project takes shape in my mind.

Andreotti had style and class; Berlusconi does not

Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?

Man can live about forty days without food about three days without water about eight minutes without air ... but only for one second without hope.

Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.

The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth

A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.

You have to know exactly what you want out of your career. If you want to be a star, you don't bother with other things.

Abbesses' recesses are not for excesses!

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.