When I used Claudia [Cardinale] for example, in Once Upon a Time in the West, she represented the birth of American matriarchy. Because women had enormous weight in America.

Because the life that I live - the life that we all live - is filtered through [one's own] experience. It isn't necessarily optimistic when you look at the political phenomena, the different things that are going on in the world.

I can't see America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.

From Ennio [Morricone] I ask for themes that clothe my characters easily. He's never read a script of mine to compose the music, because many times he's composed the music before the script is ever written.

When one goes to see Modern Times, for instance, one understands much more about socialism than listening to the man who was then head of the Socialist movement in Italy.

I think politics should be expressed in this way and not in other ways. And not just politics - sentiments, even certain states of being.

Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.