People are always misquoting me.

In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!

You cannot penetrate events with reportage.

Violence is not the only means of persuasion.

I can't imagine love without a sexual charge.

A film you can explain in words is not a real film.

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

The script is simply a series of notes for the film.

Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.

A film that can be described in words is not really a film.

Women are a finer filter of reality. They can sniff things.

There can be no censorship better than one's own conscience.

I don't know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.

The public buys "art" - but the word is drained of its meaning.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.

I never feel empty. I travel a lot and I think about other films.

Reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain.

But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

A man who renounces something is also a man who believes in something.

It isn't easy to understand the lives of people different from your own.

Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. That's why I make films, not iceboxes.

In any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.

I forget about the relationship between myself and any actress when working with her.

I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist.

I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.

Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

If an actor tries to understand too much, he will act in an intellectual and unnatural manner.

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

The struggle for life is not only the material and economic one. Comfort is no protection from anxiety.

The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying.

We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

You can't go to an LSD or pot party unless you take it yourself. If I want to go, I must take drugs myself.

I've made films about the middle classes because I know them best. Everyone talks about what he knows best.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.

My films always leave me unsatisfied, since I've always worked under fairly disastrous conditions economically.

All I know is that we are loaded down with old and stale stuff - habits, customs, old attitudes already dead and gone.

After you've learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like - including breaking those rules.

Everyone has understood me in his own way. But I would have to understand myself first in order to judge - and so far, I haven't.

Monica Vitti is astonishingly mobile. Few actresses have such mobile features. She has her own personal and original way of acting.

I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing.

Actors are always a little high at work. Acting is their drug. So when you put the brakes on, they're naturally a little disappointed.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

I always mistrust everything I see, which an image shows me, because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known.

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