Roberto Benigni quotes
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“It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : "Talking Shop At Oscar Time". Interview with Kenneth L. Woodward, www.newsweek.com. July 2, 1999.
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“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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!”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all of my English.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
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“I do not think the American peoples are idiots. They are a very playful and sensitive people! I know them!”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 1998.
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“For me, Fellini was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon cannot die.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“I am like a cartoon strip; I am like Donald Duck; everybody knows me in Italy.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“What is more simple than to tell to a little boy, 'This is not the truth, it is a game?'”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“My mother and my father went to the cinema for the first time when I made my first movie in 1978.”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : "Benigni interviewed by Adrian Wootton". Interview with Adrian Wootton, November 7, 1998.
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“The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“Maybe sometimes I have been wrong with some movies. Anyway, I try to do my best.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was 'Ben Hur'.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
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“Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
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“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!”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : "Benigni interviewed by Adrian Wootton". Interview with Adrian Wootton, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 1998.
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“Fellini belongs to nature.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“I thank my parents for the greatest gift of all: poverty”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : "The Crisis of Crowding: Quant Copycats, Ugly Models, and the New Crash Normal". Book by Ludwig B. Chincarini, 2012.
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“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“To laugh or cry is the most beautiful thing in the world”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
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“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.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly.”
-- Roberto Benigni -
“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”
-- Roberto Benigni -
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“It's me, it's my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it's my habit.”
-- Roberto BenigniSource : Interview with Nathan Rabin, film.avclub.com. June 11, 2009.
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