Quotes from Federico Fellini

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

Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen. One should go to the cinema with the innocence of a fetus

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.

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it's all a part of the carnival, isn't it?

All art is autobiographical.

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.

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

If you see with innocent eyes, everything is divine.

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.

My work has always been the thing that justifies my life.

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

You see me in my most virile moment when you see me doing what I do. When I am directing, a special energy comes upon me. ... It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The beauty of life are women, no one loves them as much as me. I adore them all, the ugly, the beautiful, the cold, the sexy and especially those that are from cinema material, shadow and light.

We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time... detached.

All art is autobiographical.

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