Roberto Benigni quotes:

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.

I am like a cartoon strip; I am like Donald Duck; everybody knows me in Italy.

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was 'Ben Hur'.

Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.

The most important thing is to continue to be yourself. The day after the Oscars, you have to get on with your life. To be honest and true to yourself.

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.

My mother and my father went to the cinema for the first time when I made my first movie in 1978.

When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!

The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards, so the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur backwards.

I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.

I could have made a small film and kept all the money from 'Life is Beautiful'. Instead, I spent more money than I had on 'Pinocchio', a very risky film.

Maybe sometimes I have been wrong with some movies. Anyway, I try to do my best.

My previous movie before 'Life Is Beautiful' was the same; they didn't release it so much in United States.

I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.

For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.

When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.

This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all of my English.

Fellini belongs to nature.

I grew up in Tuscany in a very poor family. My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.

I would like to be Jupiter, and lie down in the firmament and make love to everybody.

I do not think the American peoples are idiots. They are a very playful and sensitive people! I know them!

My mother brought me magicians and witches, because I was very ugly, really revolting. So she thought somebody had put a spell on me - this is the truth - so she made me drink some horrible terrifying potions, for year.

The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly.

I thank my parents for the greatest gift of all: poverty

It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.

It's me, it's my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it's my habit.

My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.

Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

There is nothing more beautiful in the world, enough to lose one's head. A sunset with a long nose, a starry sky that lies, a river searching for its father, a beautiful blue forest. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it's very mean, generous, magical, universal, a picture of freedom, of unrestrained desire to live, of pain and joy - a joy so powerful and sweet that it restores the souls in every spot on earth. The story of Pinocchio - nothing more beautiful in the world.

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.

To laugh or cry is the most beautiful thing in the world

What is more simple than to tell to a little boy, 'This is not the truth, it is a game?'

You're serving. You're not a servant. Serving is a supreme art. God is the first servant. God serves men but he's not a servant to men. - Eliseo Orefice