I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let my thoughts wander freely.

My films have always had an element of immediate autobiography, in that I shoot any particular scene according to the mood I'm in that day, according to the little daily experiences I've had and am having - but I don't tell what has happened to me. I would like to do something more strictly autobiographical, but perhaps I never will, because it isn't interesting enough.

I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.

I simply know what the actor's attitude should be and what he should say. He doesn't, because he can't see the relationship that begins to exist between his body and the other things in the scene.

The script is simply a series of notes for the film.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

Reality itself is steadily becoming more colored. Think of what factories were like, especially in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century, when industrialization was just beginning: gray, brown and smoky. Color didn't exist. Today, instead, most everything is colored. The pipe running from the basement to the 12th floor is green because it carries steam. The one carrying electricity is red, and that with water is purple. Also, plastic colors have filled our homes, even revolutionized our taste. Pop art grew out of that and was possible because of this change in taste.