- Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got.
- Mistakes are a part of the dues one pays for a full life.
- The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.
- Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.
- [on adultery] It's a game I never play.
- [on why she did not pose nude in the 2007 Pirelli calendar] When Sophia Loren is naked, that is a lot of nakedness.
- Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets -- "piccoli segreti" -- that are simmering on the burners.
- A woman's dress should be like a barbed wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
- A mother has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
- Many people think they want things, but they don't really have the strength, the discipline. They are weak. I believe that you get what you want if you want it badly enough.
- [on Tyrone Power] Tyrone Power was my ideal man.
- [on Marcello Mastroianni] Marcello is a man who thinks like a man, talks like a man -- is a man! He has so much magnetism, he brings out the very soul in a woman.
- [on Gregory Peck] One of the most charming men I've ever met.
- [on Cary Grant] I learned many things working with Cary Grant. He has such tremendous concentration. Many actors do not have the courage to stand still. Cary Grant knows how to concentrate, how to look directly at you, but always with great relaxation.
- [on Gina Lollobrigida] Gina's personality is limited. She is good playing a peasant but is incapable of playing a lady. That said, I don't think she's positively mad about me. Because I'm bigger than she? It's possible. Who knows?
- Hate is unfulfilled love.
- I don't understand Sharon Stone, who talks about sex as if she were talking about a bowl of spaghetti or a pizza. These things are private; you need a bit of discretion.
- I am lucky. I had a very beautiful mother.
- The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn't know what war is except from television.
- I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.
- I hated my father all my life but in his final days I forgave him for all the suffering he caused us. As you grow older, marry, and have children of you own, you learn and forget. I do not forget easily, but I do forgive.
- There IS a Fountain of Youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
- [on why she, a nominee, could not attend the 1961 Academy Awards] I decided that I could not bear the ordeal of sitting in plain view of millions of viewers while my fate was being judged. If I lost, I might faint for disappointment. If I won, I would also very likely faint with joy. I decided it would be better to faint at home.
- [on having made the drama film Two Women (1960)] I said before I am not a sexy pot. Now I can prove it.
- [on Demi Moore] She dares, and I like a person who dares.
- [her advice to young actresses] Learn how to kiss. Now they kiss like they are devouring each other. They should see how people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant kiss. Do they eat each other's faces? No.
- [2014, on a famous 1957 photo of her stink-eyeing Jayne Mansfield's cleavage] Listen. Look at the picture. Where are my eyes? I'm staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face, you can see the fear. I'm so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow--BOOM!--and spill all over the table.
- [to Barbara Walters in 2000] I am not Italian, I am a Neapolitan!
- [on meeting Madonna at the premiere of Ready to Wear (1994)] I only met her once, at a premiere. I was waiting outside with a group of people, surrounded by photographers, and she was walking towards us. I said, "Madonna, come here," because she looked so alone, and we were photographed together. She was charming and very respectful to me, but you know, she looked very lonely.
- Oh, how I loved the movies as a little girl. Particularly I loved Yvonne De Carlo - she was my favorite. Others, too, like Rita Hayworth, but I used to dream that I was Yvonne De Carlo. And I liked that little one - what was her name? - June Allyson, too. But for me there was only one Yvonne De Carlo.
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