Federico Quotes & Sayings

The gitano is the most distinguished, profound and aristocratic element in my country, the one that most represents its Way of being and best preserves the fire, the blood and the alphabet of Andalusian and universal truth ... — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

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

The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon! — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

To see you naked is to remember the Earth,
the smooth Earth, clean of horses,
the Earth without reeds, pure form,
closed to the future, confine of silver.
To see you naked is to understand the desire
of rain that looks for the delicate waist,
or the fever of the broad-faced sea
that cannot find the light of its cheek.
Blood will ring through the bedrooms
and will come with flaming swords,
but you will not know the hiding places
of the violet or the heart of the toad.
Your womb is a struggle of roots.
Your lips are a dawn without contour.
Under the lukewarm roses of the bed
the dead men moan, awaiting their return. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Understand one single day fully, so you can love every night. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920) — Federico Garcia Lorca

Green how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

The dancer's trembling heart must bring everything into harmony, from the tips of her shoes to the flutter of her eyelashes, from the ruffles of her dress to the incessant play of her fingers. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Relish the fresh landscape of my wound, break rushes and delicate rivulets, drink blood poured on honeyed thigh. — Federico Garcia Lorca

But hurry! so united, entwined,
mouths broken by love and soul bitten,
time will find us destroyed — Federico Garcia Lorca

There a lot of numbers you are going to pass for your life,
Zero- is a born number
One- is a lonely number
Two- is a number of love
Three- is a number of incomplete family
Four- is a number of Family — Federico Lomibao

The world is a shoulder of dark meat (black flesh of an old mule). And the light is on the other side. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Rules serve no purpose; they can only do harm. Not only must the artist's mind be clear, it must also be free. His fancy should not be hindered and weighed down by a mechanical servility to such rules. — Federico Zuccari

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

Remorse shows the difference between a cruel person and one that is not. — Federico Chini

Martin Scorcese is probably America's greatest living director, and while he is not a titan like John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Federico Fellini, he is certainly consistently more interesting than Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen. Even a failure like Gangs of New York or a curiosity like The Aviator is more interesting and ambitious than Munich, The Black Dahlia or Scoop. — Joe Queenan

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

It is intolerable that the world's religions - founded on the values of love and compassion - should provide a pretext for the expression of hatred and violence. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

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

The Thoroughbred exists because its selection has depended, not on experts, technicians, or zoologists, but on a piece of wood: the winning post of the Epsom Derby. If you base your criteria on anything else, you will get something else, not the Thoroughbred. — Federico Tesio

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

A novelist is really nothing more than an historian of a people who have no history. — Federico Gamboa

I know there is no straight road No straight road in this world Only a giant labyrinth Of intersecting crossroads — Federico Garcia Lorca

After returning from Cambridge in 1936, I did some work with J. M. Mioz on the oxidation of fatty acids in liver. — Luis Federico Leloir

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

Nothing is more honest than a dream. — Federico Fellini

All art is autobiographical. — Federico Fellini

Even money, which shines so much, spits sometimes. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A horse gallops with his lungs, perseveres with his heart, and wins with his character. — Federico Tesio

Air
The air
pregnant with rainbows
shatters its mirrors
over the grove. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I have flown ValuJet, ValuJet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system. — Federico Pena

The snow is falling on the deserted field of my life, and my hopes, which roam far, are afraid of becoming frozen or lost. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A poet must be a professor of the five senses and must open doors among them. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The air
pregnant with rainbows
shatters its mirrors
over the grove.

- Air — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

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

What we were not taught to think is that we are our bodies. The underlying assumption is that being a 'human being' means something different from being merely a body; more precisely, it means to be something more than it. If something more than the merely physical exists in the human being, that thing is implicitly supposed to be subtle and to transcend our ordinary physical reality. The 'realm of the soul' is thus conceived of as having a parallel but clearly distinct ontology, as the soul inherently possesses a set of durative qualities that the body seems instead to lack: i.e. perfection, purity and permanency. When — Tullio Federico Lobetti

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

Men like to pleasure us, girl. They like to undo our plaits and give us water to drink from their own mouths. That's what makes the world go round. — Federico Garcia Lorca

My head is full of fire
and grief and my tongue
runs wild, pierced
with shards of glass. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

Today in my heart a vague trembling of stars and all roses are as white as my pain. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Paint me a heaven of love with your bloodied mouth. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

One must lose one's life in order to save it. — Federico Mangahas

What matters most has an ultimate metallic quality of death. The chasuble and the wagon wheel, the razor and the prickly beards of shepherds, the bare moon, a fly, humid cupboards, rubble piles, the images of saints covered in lace, quicklime, and the wounding edges of the rooflines and watchtowers. — Federico Garcia Lorca

What you wouldn't have suspected lives & trembles in the air. Those treasures of the day you keep just out of reach. These come & go in truckloads but no one stops to see them. — Federico Garcia Lorca

After Passing By
The children watch
a distant point.
Lamps go out.
Some blind girls
question the moon
and spirals of grief
rise in the air.
The mountains survey
a distant point. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Seville is a tower full of fine archers ... Under the arch of the sky, across the clear plain, she shoots the constant arrow of her river. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The theater has to impose itself on the public, and not the public on the theater ... The word "Art" should be written everywhere, in the auditorium and in the dressing rooms, before the word "Business" gets written there. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Charred, blackened, and cooked, the morsel was brought to the mouth and chewed, contemplated, and swallowed with relish. There was no sauce or seasoning and no consideration for aesthetics or art. Yet the combination of meat and fire yielded something revolutionary. Cooked meat made man happy. — Tony Federico

The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.
I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)

- The Little Mute Boy
Translated by William S. Merwin — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

The day hunger disappears, the world will see the greatest spiritual explosion humanity has ever seen. — Federico Garcia Lorca

We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains! — Federico Garcia Lorca

The Great Sadness
You can't look at yourself
in the ocean.
Your looks fall apart
like tendrils of light.
Night on earth. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality, that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving. — Federico Garcia Lorca

And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and that few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The duende ... Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child's saliva, crushed grass, and medusa's veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is such that one is suddenly promoted to a new status. — Luis Federico Leloir

There is a period for hope and one for mourning. — Federico Chini

The night above. We two. Full moon.
I started to weep, you laughed.
Your scorn was a god, my laments
moments and doves in a chain.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.
Dawn married us on the bed,
our mouths to the frozen spout
of unstaunched blood.
The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branches
over my shrouded heart.

- Night of Sleepless Love — Federico Garcia Lorca

It is a good life we lead, brother,' said Federico with uncharacteristic solemnity.
'The best,' Ezio agreed.'And may it never change.'
They both paused - neither wishing to break the perfection of the moment - but after a while Federico quietly spoke.'May it never change us either, fratellino. — Oliver Bowden

Green how I love you green. Green wind. Green boughs. The ship on the sea And the horse on the mountain. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

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

If I told you the whole story it would never end ... What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A logical extension of our work on glycogen was to investigate the formation of starch in plants. — Luis Federico Leloir

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the snow's edge with the voices of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion; no dream:
only flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a tangle of new veins,
and those who hurt will hurt without rest
and those who are afraid of death will carry it on their shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I sing your restless longing for the statue, your fear of the feelings that await you in the street. I sing the small sea siren who sings to you, riding her bicycle of corals and conches. But above all I sing a common thought that joins us in the dark and golden hours. The light that blinds our eyes is not art. Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

What's the furthest corner? Because that's where I want to be, alone with the only thing that I love. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If blue is dream
what then innocence?
What awaits the heart
if Love bears no arrows? — Federico Garcia Lorca

I've often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake — Federico Garcia Lorca

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 universal renunciation of violence requires the commitment of the whole of society. These are not matters of government but matters of State; not only matters for the authoirities, but for society in its entirety, including civilian, military, and religious bodies. The mobilization which is urgently needed to effect the transition within two or three years from a culture of war to a culture of peace demands co-operation from everyone. In order to change, the world needs everyone. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

A creator always needs excuses. — Federico Fellini

Once words have been said there is no way to un-say them — Federico Chini

At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The path toward peace is much easier than the path toward war and confrontation. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair — Federico Garcia Lorca

Stigmata of Love
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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

I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and I imagine walking around Paris with Cesar Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet who lived in Paris. And I kind of create the walk as a kind of drama of my apprenticeship. — Edward Hirsch

Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery. — Federico Garcia Lorca

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