Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Federico Fellini
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Italian director Federico Fellini.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
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.
It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.
I make pictures to tell a story, to tell lies, and to amuse.
Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.
If you do what you were born to do, I think you will never grow old.
Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be.
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.
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.
All artists are equal when they are themselves.
Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.
The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.
Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.
I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.
A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.
You exist only in what you do.
Experience is what you get while looking for something else.
A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.
No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.
I always direct the same film. I cannot distinguish one from the other.
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.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.
Fate is written in the face.
I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.
My relationship with my body has changed. I used to consider it as a servant who should obey, function, give pleasure. In sickness, you realise that you are not the boss. It is the other way around.
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?
The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all - that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open - has disappeared.
When I start a picture, I always have a script, but I change it every day. I put in what occurs to me that day out of my imagination. You start on a voyage; you know where you will end up but not what will occur along the way. You want to be surprised.
My work has always been the thing that justifies my life.
Censorship is advertising paid by the government.
If you see with innocent eyes, everything is divine.
In 'Roma,' I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that, and it thrills me. Imagine being in a traffic jam at the Coliseum! Rome is the most wonderful movie set in the world... As was the case with many of my film ideas, it was inspired by a dream.
All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.
I did not realise that I was so loved. It can't just be for the films. I must have done something else, but I can't remember what.
There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.
A different language is a different vision of life.
I do not need a producer. I need only a good production manager. I need only a man who will give me money.
Like many people, I have no religion, and I am just sitting in a small boat drifting with the tide. I live in the doubts of my duty.... I think there is dignity in this, just to go on working.... Today we stand naked, defenseless, and more alone than at any time in history. We are waiting for something, perhaps another miracle, perhaps the Martians. Who knows?
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.
There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.
Nothing is more honest than a dream.
I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician.
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.
The visionary is the only realist.
Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present.
Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there, still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen.
Life is a combination of magic and pasta.
Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations.
A creator always needs excuses.
The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set
You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way.
Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.
One of the greatest handicaps is to fear a mistake. You have stopped yourself. You have to move freely into the arena, not just to wait for the perfect situation, the perfect moment... If you have to make a mistake, it's better to make a mistake of action than one of inaction. If I had the opportunity again, I would take chances.
Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.
I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.
Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don't want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.
I think that one can have luck if one tries to create an atmosphere of spontaneity.
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