Federico Fellini Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Federico Fellini
Cinéma-vérité? I prefer 'cine-mendacity'. A lie is always more interesting than the truth. Lies are the soul of showmanship and I adore shows.

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

Federico Fellini
I'm just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it's far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It's not just an art form; it's actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It's my way of telling a story.

Federico Fellini
I discovered that what's really important for a creator isn't what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we want to say, recall, regret, or rebel against. No, what's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.

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

Federico Fellini
The artist is simply the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world. Federico Fellini,

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

Federico Fellini
It's better to destroy than to create when you're not creating those few things which are truly necessary.

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

Federico Fellini
Would you be able to give up everything, to start life all over again to choose one thing, just one thing, and be faithful to it... to make it the thing that gives meaning to your life... something that contains everything else... that becomes everything else just because of your boundless faith in it?

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

Federico Fellini
A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.

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

Federico Fellini
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It's this in-between that I'm calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist.

Federico Fellini
If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses.

Federico Fellini
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.

Federico Fellini
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. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?

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

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

Federico Fellini
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?

Federico Fellini
When the most important times are occurring, we don't even recognize them or notice. We are just busy living our lives. Only looking back do we know what was a great moment in our lives.

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

Federico Fellini
The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borghese on a daily basis.

Federico Fellini