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

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.

Fellini belongs to nature.

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

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

'The Tiger And The Snow' is a beautiful movie. I am in love with this idea.

I am like a cartoon strip; I am like Donald Duck; everybody knows me in Italy.

I could have made a small film and kept all the money from 'Life is Beautiful'. Instead, I spent more money than I had on 'Pinocchio', a very risky film.

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

I grew up in Tuscany in a very poor family. 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.

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

I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.

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

My previous movie before 'Life Is Beautiful' was the same; they didn't release it so much in United States.

Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

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

The most important thing is to continue to be yourself. The day after the Oscars, you have to get on with your life. To be honest and true to yourself.

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.

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.

Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.

You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother.

I think of Paul Feig as the Scorsese of comedy. He's the best at what he does. I think people just trust everything that he's got to say.

I'm hoping that the administration and other thought leaders will succeed eventually in bringing the country back to the older idea that the American dream is having a career, getting a job, and getting involved in it, and doing well. That was the core of the good life.

We live in Palo Alto, which has, fortunately, one of the greatest school districts in the country.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

I don't think we interbred with the Neanderthals at all. There are some people who think that there was some level of interbreeding. I think that we look so biologically different, that we looked and we acted so different, and we culturally were so different that we would not have had interbreeding between two species.

There is no doubt that I, also, had long been aware of the problem, i.e. producing X-ray interferences, before the inherent difficulties had finally been surmounted.

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Every next level of your life will demand a different you.?

When I was a kid, I used to deliver the newspaper all over town, cramming papers between screen doors and into mailboxes and under doormats.

When something hasn't been around much for a while, and one example of it turns up and catches people's eyes, they go looking for more like it - until they get tired of it again.

When I was five I had violin lessons.

Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

The only thing worse than cruelty is delegated cruelty.

I wouldn't even have braces on my teeth. I think they are horrible, and this idea that everyone should conform and be perfect is ridiculous. I like the fact I have good old-fashioned British teeth with a big gap. Who wants those gleaming white cosmetically enhanced American teeth?

I knew everything and received everything. But real happiness, is giving.

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

And I always think of life like a giant wave. You know, it rises and it crests and it flies, and it's just magnificent, and then it crashes. And for a lot of people, when it crashes, that's the end, and they go down the deep, dark hole of depression.

Fame terrifies me. I can say that with honesty. You're terrified that, when people know the real you, they won't like you.