I realized the exciting place was behind the camera with the producer, director and so on.

If you get a book which is 600 pages, you have to reduce it to a script of 100 pages. In two hours of film, you cannot possibly include all the characters.

When I cook, my brain stops completely.

If you lived in a provincial town like Torre Annunziata, where there was nothing to do in the evening but go to the movies with your friends, the cinema was a world of fantasy. I had always been in love with it.

Nobody taught Picasso how to paint - he learned for himself. And nobody can teach you to be a producer. You can learn the mechanics, but you can't learn what's right about a script or a director or an actor. That comes from instinct and intuition. It comes from inside you.

You have to kill the bad guy.

The pope dies, you get another pope.

I see my face in the mirror, and I said, No, my ambition is not to be an actor.

Making movies is all about instinct.

If no producer, no movie.