Federico Fellini Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Never trust a woman who doesn't like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed. — Federico Fellini

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

You exist only in what you do. — Federico Fellini

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.) — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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

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

Only the early Fitzgerald was great. Then came an orgy of brutal realism — Federico Fellini

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

Experience is what you get while looking for something else. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

Borges is particularly stimulating to a man who works in the cinema, because the unusual thing about his writing is that it is like a dream, extraordinarily farsighted in calling up from the unconscious complete images in which the thing itself, and its meaning, coexist - exactly as happens in a film. And, just as happens in dreams, in Borges the incongruous, the absurd, the contradictory, the arcane and the repetitive, although as powerfully imaginative as ever, are at the same time illumined like the careful details of something larger, something unknown, and are the faultless elements of a cruelly perfect, indifferent mosaic. Even the fact that Borges's work is strangely fragmentary makes me think of a broken dreamlike flow; and the heterogeneous quality of his work - stories, essays, poems - I prefer to see not as the union of the multiple threads in a greedy, impatient talent, but as a mysterious sign of unending change. — Federico Fellini

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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? — Federico Fellini

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 — Federico Fellini

Fate is written in the face. — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography. — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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

The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything. — Federico Fellini

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

All art is autobiographical. — Federico Fellini

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

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. One should go to the cinema with the innocence of a fetus — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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

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. — Federico Fellini

Nothing is more honest than a dream. — Federico Fellini

I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education. — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

A creator always needs excuses. — Federico Fellini

Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it's all a part of the carnival, isn't it? — Federico Fellini

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

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. — Federico Fellini

Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way. — Federico Fellini

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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

A different language is a different vision of life. — Federico Fellini

I'm a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I've invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself. — Federico Fellini

The greatest danger for artists is total freedom. — Federico Fellini

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

Censorship is advertising paid by the government. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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

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? — Federico Fellini

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

The visionary is the only realist. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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. — Federico Fellini

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