You really have to be satisfied with what you are and accept from life what it still very generously offers you - and notice it, and be glad for it.

Though poor and anxious to work, I refused to alter anything. They would take me as I looked or not at all.... Eventually I profited by looking like myself and not like what was fashionable years ago with certain film technicians in Rome.

If you don't have the roots somewhere, it's very difficult for people to work with you. Because you are a different person from them. They don't know you, really. They don't know how you feel.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.

There's no pleasure in working if you don't do the things you want to do.

I can't bear being seen naked. I'm not exactly a tiny woman. When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness.