Quotes from Sergio Leone

I think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.

I admit that some of my ideas may have turned out to be pessimistic in nature.

[The director] has to, I feel, be one step back, not only from cinema, but also from politics and all these issues in order to tell and depict the situation that spreads to people.

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

The function of the flashback is Freudian...You have to let them wander like the imagination or like a dream.

I've always believed that true cinema is cinema of the imagination.

In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams.

My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa.

Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.

You see in Once Upon a Time in the West the whole film moves around her [Claudia Cardinale]. If you take her out, there's no more film. She's the central motor of the entire happening.

I can't see America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.

If a director takes the time to document - to step back to observe - I think it I more honest. Because it has to be the public that makes the conclusions and who, possibly, resolves the situation.

In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams.

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

Tuco is in a bubble bath. The One Armed Man enters the room.] One Armed Man: I've been looking for you for 8 months. Whenever I should have had a gun in my right hand, I thought of you. Now I find you in exactly the position that suits me. I had lots of time to learn to shoot with my left. [Tuco kills him with the gun he has hidden in the foam.] Tuco: When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa

The Americans have the horrible habit, among other habits, of diluting the wine of their mythical ideas with the water of the American way of life - a way of life, incidentally, which isn't of interest to anyone who has a head on his shoulders. Take Doris Day. There is a vision of America in her films, which is totalitarian and quasi-Soviet! A world without conflict, Abel without Cain.

I have to be honest about one thing. When I want to America, no on asked me how I was. Everyone always asked me, "How much do you make?"

I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.

When I used Claudia [Cardinale] for example, in Once Upon a Time in the West, she represented the birth of American matriarchy. Because women had enormous weight in America.

My films are often characterized by the lack of women present in them, except for this last one [Once Upon a Time in America].

Women had enormous weight in America. And they still have. Because they are truly the padrone [owners, masters] of America.

When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.

I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear.