I really do believe that the Jesuit system is better for a country.

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.

A hoverfly is held in a sunbeam, an insect in amber.

Wisdom is the thin conduit between two opposing viewpoints

Employers are like horses — they require management.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys' school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

The character is a piece of fiction. You are yourself, however, and that makes you interesting, because you're alive and you're a human being.

When I'm at an event, I like to be an eccentric dresser. I will just keep wearing what I like.

Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find it, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.

When I was in school, working as a team was called cheating.

I like to write music for fun. That's my hustle, my grind, my means of stayin' alive, and it's also my recreation, too.

The character of a people may be ruined by charity.