I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing.

When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Poe.

In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.

The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.

But no one should have the right to manipulate my films in the first place.

The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love.