All the people I've met, many outside of cinema, knew everything perfectly about one thing or one subject or one area.

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams.

My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa.

The important thing is to make a different world, to make a world that is not now. A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live. The myth is everything.

When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.

Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.

Probably the greatest writer of westerns himself was Homer. His character were never all good or all bad. They're half and half, these characters, as all human beings are.

You see in Once Upon a Time in the West the whole film moves around her [Claudia Cardinale]. If you take her out, there's no more film. She's the central motor of the entire happening.

There are directors, and there are authors. I think I am more of an author than a director.

I can't see America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.

One company can serve some of your needs all of the time, or all of your needs some of the time, but never both.

Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.

It's easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that's the hard part.

I couldn't sing to save myself. Greg went to John after the audition and said, 'She's cute, but she can't sing very well' and he said, 'I know. We'll teach her. I just want her on the show'.

Artists have been getting ripped off since the beginning of time, probably. But on the other hand, it might be nice to write songs. We certainly could.

To see rich land eaten away by erosion, to stand by as continual cultivation on sloping fields wears away the best soil, is enough to make a good farmer sick at heart.

The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.

God needs no worship, no praise, no thanksgiving. It is man himself who needs the benefit to be derived from these activities.

My own brain. When I get it out of the way, I'm fine.

To every obstacle oppose patience, perseverance and soothing language.