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

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

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.

It's very difficult to be original.

A flower must bloom inside first before revealing its beauty to the world.

Nothing can replace confidence and single-minded pursuit of purpose.

Meditation is listening the inner song. The song of Love, Peace and Light

The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode.

There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.

If we could sell 100,000 units every album, that would rock. We'd have a big cult following, we'd have a built-in fanbase so we could pretty much play anywhere, people would show up and rock out

You can’t trust those damn Catholics.

Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

Hon, when someone's a true friend, there's no need to miss 'em." She patted her chest. "'Cause they're always right here.

Any appeasement of tyranny is treason.