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.

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

I think even in American schools, they must be studying in a specialized manner.

The function of the flashback is Freudian...You have to let them wander like the imagination or like a dream.

I don't want to do a war film per se. Nor do I want to do a political film.

All the people I've met, many outside of cinema, knew everything perfectly about one thing or one subject or one area.

My films are often characterized by the lack of women present in them, except for this last one [Once Upon a Time in America].