Sophia Loren quotes:

After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.

I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.

You have to enjoy life. Always be surrounded by people that you like, people who have a nice conversation. There are so many positive things to think about.

A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.

Learn to use your brains as deftly as your powder box, and then, perhaps, powder box you will not need ... Know smart women men say beautiful - eyes snatched from the crowd and do not forget just charming.

No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: 'Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back.'

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself...

There is a Fountain of Youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

Mistakes are a part of the dues one pays for a full life.

I'm a giraffe. I even walk like a giraffe with a long neck and legs. It's a pretty dumb animal, mind you.

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.

Good food is a celebration of life.

I eat a lot of salad, a little meat, and some fruit. That's all. But I like sweets.

If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful.

Many people think they want things, but they don't really have the strength, the discipline. They are weak. I believe that you get what you want if you want it badly enough.

I'm an actress. It's my passion.

True love comes along after adolescence, when we have learned not to cry for nothing.

The most indespensible ingredient of all good home cooking: love for those you are cooking for.

The right hairstyle can make a plain woman beautiful and a beautiful woman unforgettable.

The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn't know what war is except from television.

A mother has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

I am lucky. I had a very beautiful mother.

I am against all war.

Isn't it wonderful to be alive? You know, you can forget all about it. Then suddenly you remember, and think of all the things you can do. Here I am. I can walk around. I can talk. I can see things and remember things. I am alive. How wonderful!

Mistakes are the price of an interesting life.

Transformation is something I cannot explain - too much analysis might destroy it.

You cannot say, because I am from Naples so I like the mixture of drama and comedy all together.

I exist only because inside of me and above all else I am only and above all a Neapolitan. Naples exists inside of me, and always will. Fortunately for me there is this treasure that I have inside of me and, when I need it, then I pull it out.

I'd much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0.

Physical exercise makes you more graceful. After some gymnasitics you walk as if the whole street is yours.

The word Action! frees me - the transformation is something I cannot explain - too much analysis might destroy it

Be careful about what you eat because otherwise you get fat! Do you like to be fat? Eat very, very, very little things. Almost starve, but I don't starve, because I eat very much.

I'm a very shy person, and I never tried to do theater. I've been asked many, many times by the most incredible authors in America to do theater. And I always said no, not knowing what it is to be on the stage and to do theater.

I'm a very shy person and I never tried to do theater.

At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, "completes what nature left unfinished.

You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old.

Success, I would find out, is interior. It has to do with self-fulfillment and the joy of living.

I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn't and it really doesn't have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips.

I think the quality of sexiness comes from within.

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.

Any woman can look her best if she feels good in her skin. It's not a question of clothes or makeup. It's how she sparkles.

When I was a child, fear was common to my life - fear of having nothing to eat, fear of the other children taunting me at school because I was illegitimate, and particularly fear of the big bombers appearing overhead and dropping their lethal bursts from the sky.

Sex is like washing your face - just something you do because you have to. Sex without love is absolutely ridiculous. Sex follows love, it never precedes it.

Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.

I think, in our life I think that when you are an actor, when you are a producer, you have to be very discreet about your personal life, and you have to be closed in, in harmony and in affection and in everything.

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

I'm an actress. It's my passion. It's - I've always lived for acting.

I always try to have a vacation.

[William] Klein has eyes like a knife. He is ruthless and outrageous but never mean - he is tender and funny and violent - and, I'm sure, really in love with our crazy Rome.

A dog is faithful, a woman never.

A mother always thinks twice: for herself and for the child

Almost starve, but I don't starve because I eat very much

And as I walk round the park I always think, 'Maybe round the corner I am going to find something beautiful.' I always think positively. It is very rare that you find me in a mood that is sad or melancholic,

As far as beauty is concerned, in order to be confident we must accept that the way we look and feel is our own responsibility.

At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, 'completes what nature left unfinished.'

Be honest about what you can get. To make a sacrifice and to get what you want you need to be very certain. In other words: always think about your objective, have a clear goal and commit to it from the heart.

Beauty is how you feel inside...

Beauty is in you and is reflected in your eyes. It is not material.

Beauty is no handicap if you don't think about it.

Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one.

Believe me, it is actions that count.

Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets -- 'piccoli segreti' -- that are simmering on the burners.

Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.

For me, it is good to be vulnerable. It makes me nice... weak sometimes, but in a good way, not a tragic way.

Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.

Hate is unfulfilled love.

I believe that rewards in life are deserved. Every reward is the fruit of discipline, of dedication and of sacrifices. And of stubbornness.

I can cook, I can breathe, I can live!

I can't bear being seen naked. I'm not exactly a tiny woman. When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness.

I do not know if I really am a big star. And in fact that is not the most important thing for me. What counts in life is to bring about more of your own dreams. In such a way that your life becomes like a fairy tale. This is what has happened to me, it is just like that.

I firmly believe we can make our own miracles if we believe strongly enough in ourselves and our mission on earth.

I hated my father all my life but in his final days I forgave him for all the suffering he caused us. As you grow older, marry, and have children of you own, you learn and forget. I do not forget easily, but I do forgive.

I have my own peculiar yardstick for measuring a man: Does he have the courage to cry in a moment of grief? Does he have the compassion not to hunt an animal? In his relationship with a woman, is he gentle? Real manliness is nurtured in kindness and gentleness, which I associate with intelligence, comprehension, tolerance, justice, education, and high morality. If only men realized how easy it is to open a woman's heart with kindness, and how many women close their hearts to the assaults of the Don Juans.

I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself.

i have no regrets. regret only makes wrinkles.

I know how to say 'no' in twelve languages. That's enough for a woman.

I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

I still like me, inside and out. Not in a vain way - I just feel good in my skin.

I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

I was not interested in what I could bring to myself by being an actress, but in what I could bring out of myself.

I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it.

I was so skinny, they gave me the nickname stechetto - the stick. I was tall, thin, ugly and dark like an Arab girl. I looked strange. All eyes. No flesh on my bones.

If you are a professional actor who has pride in his work, then the judgment of your peers should be important to you. I treasure each and every award I have ever received - and my Oscar is in a place of honor.

If you can learn to use your mind as well as your powder puff, you will become more truly beautiful.

Ignorance has its virtues; without it there'd be mighty little conversation.

I'm not Italian, I am Neapolitan! It's another thing!

I'm very susceptible to sex appeal.

Is my mother my friend? I would have to say, first of all she is my Mother, with a capital 'M'; she's something sacred to me. I love her dearly...yes, she is also a good friend, someone I can talk openly with if I want to.

It [winning Oscar] is the most important event in the career of an actor, an extraordinary moment, beautiful. Some people live their whole life just to win an Oscar.

It is very important for an actor or actress to look around at everything and everyone and never forget about real life.

It's a mistake to think that once you're done with school you need never learn anything new.

It's necessary to have an energy that carries you forward. You need the will to live, to have a great curiosity. To look for the best in life, to find new interests.

Jealousy is a miserable feeling. It means you aspire to something that you cannot have. Even in love, it is better to leave, better not to waste time.

Learn to use your brains as deftly as your powder box, and then maybe you have a powder box and do not need ...

Luck assists fortune, you need to catch the moment. Otherwise the opportunity fades.

My mother taught me to walk proud and tall 'as if the world was mine.'

My philosophy is that it's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe and not to explore at all.

Once I put myself into a thing, I do my utmost, my very, very best.

Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got.

Show business is what I do, not what I am.

Style must be adapted to the woman and not vice versa. The same can be said of clothes.

The eyes of a woman who never cried can not be beautiful.

The fantasy of a man is the best weapon of a woman.

The first woman was created from the rib of a man. She was not made from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him.

The Fountain of Youth is in your mind.

The girl who swears no one has ever made love to her has a right to swear.

The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.

There is no better love potion than a coffee. When a man drinks the coffee made by you he will become forever yours.

There is no greater love potion than regular coffee, brewed his own. When a man tries it, he was not going anywhere.

There's no pleasure in working if you don't do the things you want to do.

Though poor and anxious to work, I refused to alter anything. They would take me as I looked or not at all.... Eventually I profited by looking like myself and not like what was fashionable years ago with certain film technicians in Rome.

True happiness is impossible without solitude.... I need solitude in my life as I need food and drink and the laughter of little children. Extravagant though it may sound, solitude is the filter of my soul. It nourishes me, and rejuvenates me. Left alone, I discovered that I keep myself good company.