I dislike judging myself, but I will say I would be wealthy today if I had accepted all the films that have been offered to me with large sums of money. But I've always refused, in order to do what I felt like doing.

I always mistrust everything I see, which an image shows me, because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known.

In any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.

I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

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 a starting point, not a fixed highway. I must look through the camera to see if what I've written on the page is right or not. In the script, you describe imagined scenes, but it's all suspended in mid-air. Often, an actor viewed against a wall or a landscape, or seen through a window, is much more eloquent than the lines you've given him. So then you take out the lines. This happens often to me and I end up saying what I want with a movement or a gesture.