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

I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.

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.

Neorealism taught us to follow the characters with the camera, allowing each shot its own real interior time. Well, I became tired of all this; I could no longer stand real time. In order to function, a shot must show only what is useful.

I've never had a method of working. I change according to circumstances; I don't employ any particular technique or style. I make films instinctively, more with my belly than with my brain.

Another reason for switching to color is world television. In a few years, it will all be in color, and you can't compete against that with black-and-white films.