I've always believed that true cinema is cinema of the imagination.

I had never thought of making a western even as I was making it.

The very fact of seeking specialization is probably what makes America so great in these two hundred years. But also, the sensation that somebody who wants to understand America doesn't really need to visit it much.

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 think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.

I'm not saying that the Americans had the same impact as the Jesuits, but I do see them as a very specialized populace, even in terms of being, to a degree, naïve. Because naiveté comes from lack of information.

I didn't want [actress] just to be a woman standing at the window, waving hello and goodbye to men as they came and went in the world that they were struggling through. I wanted her to have a true function.