When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.

When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.

My mother brought me magicians and witches, because I was very ugly, really revolting. So she thought somebody had put a spell on me - this is the truth - so she made me drink some horrible terrifying potions, for year.

It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.

My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.

I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards, so the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur backwards.

When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!

Fellini belongs to nature.

For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.

I do not think the American peoples are idiots. They are a very playful and sensitive people! I know them!

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

Maybe sometimes I have been wrong with some movies. Anyway, I try to do my best.

My mother and my father went to the cinema for the first time when I made my first movie in 1978.

Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

'The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.

The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly.

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was 'Ben Hur'.

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.