Top 60 Federico Fellini Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A different language is a different vision of life.”

— Federico Fellini

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2. “The visionary is the only realist.”

— Federico Fellini

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3. “You have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.”

— Federico Fellini

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4. “There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”

— Federico Fellini

5. “No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It’s the most important thing.”

— Federico Fellini

6. “Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present.”

— Federico Fellini

7. “You exist only in what you do.”

— Federico Fellini

8. “Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper’s scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.”

— Federico Fellini

9. “Freedom, especially a woman’s freedom, is a conquest to be made, not a gift to be received. It isn’t granted. It must be taken.”

— Federico Fellini

10. “Nothing is more honest than a dream.”

— Federico Fellini

11. “Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.”

— Federico Fellini

12. “Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”

— Federico Fellini

13. “Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”

— Federico Fellini

14. “Don’t tell me what I’m doing; I don’t want to know.”

— Federico Fellini

15. “Censorship is advertising paid by the government.”

— Federico Fellini

16. “Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations.”

— Federico Fellini

17. “There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.”

— Federico Fellini

18. “Experience is what you get while looking for something else.”

— Federico Fellini

19. “All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”

— Federico Fellini

20. “I claim the right to contradict myself. I don’t want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense, and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.”

— Federico Fellini

21. “Going to the cinema is like returning to the womb; you sit there, still and meditative in the darkness, waiting for life to appear on the screen.”

— Federico Fellini

22. “The greatest danger for artists is total freedom.”

— Federico Fellini

23. “All art is autobiographical.”

— Federico Fellini

24. “One doesn’t remember one’s own life chronologically, the way it happened, what was most important, or even what seemed most important. We are not in control of our memories. One doesn’t own one’s memories. One is owned by them.”

— Federico Fellini

25. “Never trust a woman who doesn’t like to eat. She is probably lousy in bed.”

— Federico Fellini

26. “Marriage, if it is to survive, must be treated as the beginning, not as the happy ending.”

— Federico Fellini

27. “Don’t forget that costumes, like dreams, are symbolic communication. Dreams teach us that a language for everything exists – for every object, every color worn, every clothing detail. Hence, costumes provide an aesthetic objectification that helps to tell the character’s story.”

— Federico Fellini

28. “The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.”

— Federico Fellini

29. “I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education.”

— Federico Fellini

30. “God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.”

— Federico Fellini

31. “Fate is written in the face.”

— Federico Fellini

32. “For people who live in the imagination, there is no lack of subjects. To seek for the exact moment at which inspiration comes is false. Imagination floods us with suggestions all the time, from all directions.”

— Federico Fellini

33. “We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.”

— Federico Fellini

34. “I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.”

— Federico Fellini

35. “No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.”

— Federico Fellini

36. “I never make moral judgments; I’m not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician.”

— Federico Fellini

37. “Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you’ve made is worth the misery of having to review it.”

— Federico Fellini

38. “Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”

— Federico Fellini

39. “It’s easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.”

— Federico Fellini

40. “Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair.”

— Federico Fellini

41. “Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious.”

— Federico Fellini

42. “Happiness is simply a temporary condition that proceeds unhappiness. Fortunately for us, it works the other way around as well. But it’s all a part of the carnival, isn’t it?”

— Federico Fellini

43. “A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.”

— Federico Fellini

44. “When the most important times are occurring, we don’t even recognize them or notice. We are just busy living our lives. Only looking back do we know what was a great moment in our lives.”

— Federico Fellini

45. “Loneliness is a heavy burden, but i’d rather be alone than make compromises.”

— Federico Fellini

46. “Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don’t want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.”

— Federico Fellini

47. “I even see the cinema itself as a woman, with its alternation of light and darkness, of appearing and disappearing images.”

— Federico Fellini

48. “A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.”

— Federico Fellini

49. “Peellaert’s comic strips were the literature of intelligence, imagination and romanticism.”

— Federico Fellini

50. “As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?”

— Federico Fellini