My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa.

There are directors, and there are authors. I think I am more of an author than a director.

I admit that some of my ideas may have turned out to be pessimistic in nature.

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.

I must be honest and say that I was under the fascination of films. I was fascinated by all films, even the words of them. If I was to do a more-precise analysis of the situation, I have to admit that I was more entertained by the bad films than the good ones. Because when something is beautiful, it is there; it is finished; it is done. It doesn't have to be touched or be worked upon.

The best photographers are super nice people and that its not a coincidence. Great photographers genuinely like people, and people can feel that. That's what makes people feel comfortable. It is important to appear confident with clients, but it is more important to not be afraid to act like a fool, have fun, laugh and shake your hips to get people comfortable.

I had more trouble than I had a sense of utility or satisfaction. But it served to occupy me and to keep me occupied in a field that I love - which was cinema - while I was waiting to realize the film that I wanted to do, which was Once Upon a Time in America, which took ten years of thinking and working to realize.