There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.

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

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

If there is an auteur who influenced me - and there is only one - that is Charlie Chaplin. And he never won an Oscar.

I always fish out antique ideas, very old ideas.

The world is in America. In Italy is only Italy. France is full of France. Germany is full of Germany. In a continent that contains the entire world, contradictions are, of course, constantly arising.

I don't enter into particulars with [Ennio Morricone]. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.