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

There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.

I consciously chose a person like the bounty killer [of the Fistful trilogy] because he was the street sweeper of the desert, a man who put his life at risk exclusively for the money. I'm not saying that he went against the law, but he put himself within the wings of the law only when it was something that he could profit by.

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

I always fish out antique ideas, very old ideas.

It's very difficult to be original.