Federico Fellini Quotes

A creator always needs excuses.

Marriage, if it is to survive, must be treated as the beginning, not as the happy ending.

Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations.

Only the early Fitzgerald was great. Then came an orgy of brutal realism

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.

Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships.

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way.

The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything.

When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity ... I can be sure that I am right.

Nothing is more honest than a dream.

Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way.

Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.

A different language is a different vision of life.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious.

I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education.

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

Peellaert's comic strips were the literature of intelligence, imagination and romanticism.

We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we're faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

The greatest danger for artists is total freedom.

Censorship is advertising paid by the government.

I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

I think that one can have luck if one tries to create an atmosphere of spontaneity.

You exist only in what you do.

According to the doctors, I'm only suffering from a light form of premature baldness.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

All art is autobiographical.

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

Life is a combination of magic and pasta.

Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair.

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

No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.

I even see the cinema itself as a woman, with its alternation of light and darkness, of appearing and disappearing images

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

Never trust a woman who doesn't like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.

Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present.

Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.

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

The visionary is the only realist.

Freedom, especially a woman's freedom, is a conquest to be made, not a gift to be received. It isn't granted. It must be taken.

I always direct the same film. I can't distinguish one from the other.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet ... maybe we could understand something.

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

Fate is written in the face.

As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.