"I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences."

"I've been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I've wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise."

"When I was five. That's when I started to love film."

"If you don't like my movies, don't watch them."

"Paradise is too perfect for humanity."

"But no one should have the right to manipulate my films in the first place."

"I'm very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I'm interested in their lives and their problems."

"Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will."

"The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It's a horrible experience."

"I wanted to get back to my style of 20 years ago after a long period of exploring horror and fantasy themes."

"In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you."

"In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul."

"So I haven't thought about the critics for a long time."

"Even in the former Soviet Union, they have good copies of my movies."

"I also don't like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don't like."

"It irritated me that my fans kept wanting me to retread old ground."

"When I see a film I've finished, it's like another person made it. Like another mind."

"To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects."

"There's nothing gratuitous about my films."

"If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them."

"Young girls of 13 or 12 are great actors."

"The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love."

"Maybe when I stop making movies, I'll understand my work better."

"I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul."

"My life and career is my own adventure."

"I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing."

"When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Poe."

"Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself."