[introducing Sophia Loren at a life-time award celebration] When I hear the name Sophia, I jump and jump again because it's an explosion of life.. She is Italy and very Italian. When she moves, when she walks, all of Italy is walking. You can see Sicily, Tuscany, Lombardy move. Then Milan, Florence, Naples, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum, pizza, spaghetti, Toro, De Sica. She holds all these things and all these people inside

[During his speech after winning the Oscar for Life is Beautiful] I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

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.

On Stanley Kubrick: Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

[said backstage at the Oscars after he won the Best Actor category] "I'm so happy that every organ in my body is moving in a very bad way."

Charlie Chaplin used his ass better than any other actor. In all his films his ass is practically the protagonist. For a comic, the ass has incredible importance.

[on winning the Best Actor Academy Award for La vita è bella (1997) after already accepting the Best Foreign Language Film award as its director] "Thank you. This is a terrible mistake, because I used up all my English!"