“I’ve always seen him as a wonderful apprentice: someone who learns instead of teaching.”

“He was a natural at seducing.”

“Bernardo, you took away a piece of my heart.”

“Today, addressing the living, that’s the way I remember and thank him.”

“I learned to see with Bernardo Bertolucci.”

“Here he would have said: less sentimental.”

“His artistic and incredibly beautiful mind still races everywhere.”

“He made every movie as if it was the first.”

“Every provocation is fabulous and fair as such.”

“It’s all so simple, yes, it was so simple, it is so clear I almost can’t believe it. Here’s what the body is for: you touch me or you don’t touch me, you hold me or send me away. The rest is for lunatics.”

“Editing has always been very important for Bernardo and for me, like finding the musical score of the right rhythm for the film we had in mind.”

“My admiration for Bernardo is for all of his films.”

“He gave me so much.”

♫

“We’ll never be without his memory, and without his masterful, sweeping, astonishing use of cinema.”

“If we had no more points of view we would be everything.”

“We had the same age, teenagers from the sixties, we had grown up on the nouvelle vague, we used to call ourselves the last children of Renoir.”

“Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!”

“Eternal life to his cinema.”

“I could say that Bernardo saved my life.”

“Cinema has to re-engage, it’s our mission, and I think this is part of the legacy of Bernardo.”

“So we’ll go no more a roving, so late into the night, though the heart be still as loving, and the moon be still as bright.”

“And when I asked him: you have had so many proposals to stage an Opera, why don’t you try? he answered: because I would miss the camera.”

“He said: there is a difference between me and other hypochondriacs. And the difference is that I really am sick.”

“He was a maestro to me, non just in cinema, but in food, pleasure, and friendship.”

“Not only was he a great director, he was also a great person.”

“I began to love Bernardo after Before the Revolution. I saw that movie and I said: this is the cinema I want to do.”

“Bernardo, when you’ll get up there – you’re already up there – save me a good seat.”

“The beauty of Bertolucci’s cinema was what was around his movies.”

♫

“I wanted to be in all his movies.”

“One day I asked him: how come our first films are stronger than those we made later? And he replied: maybe next time we should do the old ones first and save the first ones for the end.”

“I have never met anybody more profoundly innocent, poetic and warm.”

“And I realized that I was privileged to have seen something very rare, the very moment when a new young artist, just one year older than me, had arrived.”

“Because from my point of view, both as a man and as an artist, you were able to open windows.”

“I’ve never got the chance to be Bernardo Bertolucci, because there’s only room for one.”

“When you experience beauty together, and life lessons, and wisdom, it falls into your soul like a light that will never go out.”

“Earth, receive an honoured guest.”

“We were all blessed, very blessed to know him and to love him.”

“Really you spoiled me, because I thought that all the directors would be like that, and I was very wrong because it was very unique to you.”

“Everything I remember about him is full joy and happiness.”

“He had this extraordinary ability to tell the story of this country.”

“When you’re sad and when you’re lonely, and you haven’t got a friend, just remember that death is not the end.”

“Once someone goes you sort of inherit the relationship.”