Federico Fellini Quotations

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.

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

A different language is a different vision of life.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

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

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.

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 discovered that what's really important for a creator isn't what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we want to say, recall, regret, or rebel against. No, 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.

What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one.... Its this in-between that Im calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible onewhich is really the realm of the artist.

When you live with another person for 50 years, all of your memories are invested in that person, like a bank account of shared memories. Its not that you refer to them constantly. In fact, for people who do not live in the past, you almost never say, Do you remember that night we...? But you dont have to. That is the best of all. You know that the other person does remember. Thus, the past is part of the present as long as the other person lives. It is better than any scrapbook, because you are both living scrapbooks.

A sign of growing old is when interviewers start asking you,What would you do differently if you had your life to live over again? I give some sort of answer because I dont wish to be rude, but I dont tell them the image that comes into my mind because they would think it vain and frivolous, and no one wants to be a subject for ridicule. I see myself as a tall, skinny Fellini, vigorously lifting weights. Thats what I would do differently. I would lift weights.

Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious.

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

Peellaert's comic strips were the literature of intelligence, imagination and romanticism.

Every time I start a picture ... I feel the same fear, the same self-doubts . . . and I have only one source on which I can draw, because it comes from within me.

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

There is no such thing as a good paparazzo. A good paparazzo, that's a paparazzo who has had his camera broken. In fact, they are bandits, thieves of photography. (Statement after photographs were published showing Jackie Onassis sunbathing nude.)

The greatest danger for artists is total freedom.

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

Fate is written in the face.

A creator always needs excuses.

I claim the right to contradict myself. I don't want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense, and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.

Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships.

All art is autobiographical.

Freedom, especially a woman's freedom, is a conquest to be made, not a gift to be received. It isn't granted. It must be taken.

According to the doctors, I'm only suffering from a light form of premature baldness.

As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?

Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.

The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything.

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.

I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.

We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time... detached.

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 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 all the rest of it.

If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses

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.

As I don't consider myself exceptional, but simply a storyteller, each of my stories is really a period of my life. Deep down I feel that criticism of my work-which is the most sincere and authentic vision of myself-is unsuitable and immodest, whether it is favorable or unfavorable.

Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.

Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations.

Our duty as storytellers is to bring people to the station. There each person will choose his or her own train...But we must at least take them to the station...to a point of departure.

For people who live in the imagination, there is no lack of subjects. To seek for the exact moment at which inspiration comes is false. Imagination floods us with suggestions all the time, from all directions.

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. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?

I even see the cinema itself as a woman, with its alternation of light and darkness, of appearing and disappearing images

An artist is a provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one. That is the realm of the artist.

Marriage, if it is to survive, must be treated as the beginning, not as the happy ending.

Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.

Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.

Nothing is more honest than a dream.

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.

When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity...I can be sure that I am right.

Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair.

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?

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.

I always direct the same film. I can't distinguish one from the other.

Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present.

You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way.

You see me in my most virile moment when you see me doing what I do. When I am directing, a special energy comes upon me. ... It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex.

When the most important times are occurring, we don't even recognize them or notice. We are just busy living our lives. Only looking back do we know what was a great moment in our lives.

I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.

The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borghese on a daily basis.

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.

I think that one can have luck if one tries to create an atmosphere of spontaneity.

I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education.

You exist only in what you do.

The visionary is the only realist.

Don't forget that costumes, like dreams, are symbolic communication. Dreams teach us that a language for everything exists - for every object, every color worn, every clothing detail. Hence, costumes provide an aesthetic objectification that helps to tell the character's story.

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.

Life is a combination of magic and pasta.

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 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.