“As barbaric is we are, it’s a miracle we haven’t blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.”

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy.

My existence is about making movies, so I’ve just got to rock and roll with the punches.

But I’m never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is.

My life is proof that I don’t need you to do what I do. If there’s no one to see it, I’ll watch it.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won’t answer the door.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it’s like, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don’t find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

I don’t care if I get $50 million to do a film.

He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him

I don’t know what DVD commentaries are about. I’d like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

The limits of my imagination is the only thing that’s gonna stop me.

He brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.

So what. What are you going to do? Jump off the Empire State Building?” It’s all still the same. The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

Which filmmaking is completely done under in many circumstances. You’re under constant crisis, making a movie

A lifetime isn’t long enough to learn how to make films.

For years, they were doing horrible things to animals in the manufacture of cosmetics, and testing of the most barbaric types; today, if you go into a drugstore and go down the [cosmetics] aisle.