In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.
Roberto BenigniRead
When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Appreciation of art can create a deep personal connection with the artist and their work.
In this quote, Roberto Benigni reflects on his childhood experience of reading Dante's work and feeling a profound connection to the beauty of the literature. The way he describes his admiration shows how art can evoke strong emotions and a sense of friendship with its creator, highlighting the intimate bond between an artist and their audience through the shared experience of art.
Themes
DanteBeautyArtLiteratureConnection
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the impact of art on personal growth.
More from Roberto Benigni
All quotes →Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.
Roberto BenigniRead
I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.
Roberto BenigniRead
When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.
Roberto BenigniRead
Similar quotes
I am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.
Jean-Luc GodardRead
Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.
Martin McdonaghRead
I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.
Claude DebussyRead
Bad Gardens copy, good gardens create, great gardens transcend. What all great gardens have in common are their ability to pull the sensitive viewer out of him or herself and into the garden, so completely that the separate self-sense disappears entirely, and at least for a brief moment one is ushered into a nondual and timeless awareness. A great garden, in other words, is mystical no matter what its actual content.
Ken WilberRead
To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue. I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.
Lauryn HillRead