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

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing.

There's much talk about the problems of youth, but young people are not a problem. It's a natural evolution of things. We, who have known only how to make war and slaughter people, have no right to judge them, nor can we teach them anything.

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

I don't know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.

A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened.