"I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself."

"I am like a sponge in the way I absorb all the elements that suit me and reject those that do not."

"I find cooking the most exciting, and at the same time the most relaxing activity that I know, which is true of almost everything you adore doing."

"You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old."

"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."

"Sex is like washing your face - just something you do because you have to. Sex without love is absolutely ridiculous. Sex follows love, it never precedes it."

"I'm a giraffe. I even walk like a giraffe with a long neck and legs. It's a pretty dumb animal, mind you."

"No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: "Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back."

"If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful."

"I was so skinny, they gave me the nickname stechetto - the stick. I was tall, thin, ugly and dark like an Arab girl. I looked strange. All eyes. No flesh on my bones."

"It's a game I never play." (on adultery)

"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."

"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."

"The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty."

"Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life."

"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."

"I can't bear being seen naked. I'm not exactly a tiny woman. When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness."