Roberto Benigni Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Dante Alighieri has the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. So it's talking about us, it's concerning us. Everything in it conveys sentiment, emotions. He is really the greatest poet ever. So I am really very proud to present the shining pearl of Italian culture around the world.

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.

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.

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.

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

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