Federico Fellini

“I did not realise that I was so loved. It can't just be for the films. I must have done something else, but I can't remember what.”

“You exist only in what you do.”

“All artists are equal when they are themselves.”

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.”

“All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.”

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”

“The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all - that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open - has disappeared.”

“I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?”

“If you do what you were born to do, I think you will never grow old.”

“I’m a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I’ve invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself.”

“Censorship is advertising paid by the government.”

“Through the ages, from the beginning of time, I'm certain man has covered woman's face with masks. They are, however, his masks, not hers.”

“I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.”

“If you see with innocent eyes, everything is divine.”

“Fate is written in the face.”

“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”

“I always direct the same film. I cannot distinguish one from the other.”

“To people of my generation, the picture show was really another dimension - sensual, whimsical. No uniforms or collective rites, but a place where little boys like me could laugh and feel free.”

“I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.”

“Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.”