What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

To survive, you must tell stories.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

I don't think I could ever work in such a blatantly hierarchical corporate setting. I know that everyone in this world is not equal, but I can't bear environments that make this truth so obvious.

Apathy is the door to ignorance. Empathy is the door to wisdom.

Religion teaches us to fight against our natural instincts but it thrives on them

If fame came near to you to get you, you must run away from it very fast! Because this is a matter of freedom and captivity!

Number of empty Ben & Jerry's containers: 3 - two mint chocolate cookie, one plain vanilla. (Who buys plain vanilla ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, anyway? Is there a greater waste?)

When seen from outer space, our beautiful blue planet has no national boundaries.

As in so many cases of sexual abuse within the family, it is much more complicated than had it been done by a stranger.

if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity.

I feel more comfortable doing films with groups of guys. It's a lot easier for me. There's a difference with women: you can't take them to dinner every night and go crazy