Bernardo Bertolucci quotes:

What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.

I like being able to see an innocence in people. I see a lot of beauty in youth. Young people are in progress. Their faces and bodies and minds are constantly changing. It's exciting to capture that on film.

I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

What happened in the late Fifties, early Sixties in French cinema was a fantastic revolution. I was in Italy, but completely in love with the nouvelle vague movement, and directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy. 'The Dreamers' was a total homage to cinema and that love for it.

Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

Every film I have made has corresponded to a very special moment of my life. I like to think that if someone wanted to reconstruct the story of my life, they can just see my movies and know what I have been through.

If New York is the Big Apple, tonight Hollywood is the Big Nipple.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.

The conformist understands that the reason of his desperate look for conformism is that he realises he is different and that he never accepted his difference.

You live day by day. You can't build your life.

I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment.

English dialogue is the best in the world. So dry and direct. The Italian language is beautiful, but it is too literary.

After many, many years, I fell out of love with politics. It's not something I like but it's the truth.

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is.

For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.

I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.

The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting 'Last Tango in Paris,' I was thinking I was doing a political film.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.

I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.

I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.

I think politics is a higher build in life. You know? If you diffuse under normal, common sense of a story, you make it political. If you choose a conventional way for a story, or refuse to use the conventional way, you make it political.

There's no more film; now everything's digital. I welcome this. It's fantastic for me to have a new chance.

I like to be in a huis clos, as the French say - in one place. Its something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!

Sometimes you are in sync with the times, sometimes you are in advance, sometimes you are late.

I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.

I started in '69 to have psychoanalysis, and I realised very soon that I was changing, and that's I think why my movies were changing. They became much more open to dialogue.

I was writing poems when I was young, you know, because my father was a poet, so it was absolutely normal to follow my father.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great in a kind of realistic normal story without throwing objects to the camera, but using the 3D on the emotions in an intimate story.

I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.

This is something that I dream about: to live films, to arrive at the point at which one can live for films, can think cinematographically, eat cinematographically, sleep cinematographically, as a poet, a painter, lives, eats, sleeps painting.

A dolly move is a moral commitment.

Sometimes I think that I understand my movies after I make them. Really. I go very often off of instinct.

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema.

Pornography is not in the hands of the child who discovers his sexuality by masturbating, but in the heart of the adult who slaps him.

I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.

New York has always embraced me.

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.

You know, in ten years you're gonna be playing soccer with your tits, what do you think of that?

To explore technology for me is something that I have to do. Otherwise, I feel completely left in the back... abandoned.

I like that 3D is based on the fact that you look with two eyes, so two cameras imitate that.

I haven't made a movie for a while, but I've watched a lot. It's my major waste of time. I like to work, but also to be waiting for work.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.