“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”

It’s funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it’s fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

Even if you’re a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you’re still in the world

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.

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

I like girls to be wild but at the same time beautifully brought up and very funny.

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

You know I was a shy guy and people didn’t know that and still don’t know it today. I’m sure basketball brought my shyness out because of the fact that you have to do interviews, and that people are always talking to you in terms of the fans and everything.

I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn’t a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me – I actually took my teachers seriously!

This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.

Love gives itself; it is not bought.

I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in ‘Teardrops On My Guitar,’ and she was like, ‘Isn’t this song great?’ And everyone was like, ‘Who’s Taylor Swift?’ And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.

I was brought up by two women: my mother and my grandmother.