FEDERICO FELLINI

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

You exist only in what you do.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be.

A different language is a different vision of life.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

Fate is written in the face.

When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.

If you do what you were born to do, I think you will never grow old.

I'd like very much to make a confident picture. I would like to be as good as nature, which, with a shower, produces flowers and grass to cover the destruction. But we are surrounded by human fragmentation, by pessimism, and it is difficult to talk of other things.

To people of my generation, the picture show was really another dimension - sensual, whimsical. No uniforms or collective rites, but a place where little boys like me could laugh and feel free.

Through the ages, from the beginning of time, I'm certain man has covered woman's face with masks. They are, however, his masks, not hers.