Culturally, I have always been part of the proletariat. I lived side by side with the sons of glassblowers, fishermen and smugglers. The stories they told were shaper satires about the hypocrisy of authority and the middle classes, the two-facedness of teachers and lawyers and politicians. I was born politicized.
Dario Fo
Know how to live the time that is given you.
A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.
I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate.
While drawing, I discover what I really want to say.
Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is liberty. We have but one thought, revolution in our hearts.
Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.
It is extremely dangerous to talk about limits or borders. It is vital, instead, that we remain completely open, that we are always involved, and that we aim to contribute personally in social events.
Laughter does not please the mighty.
My theater has always been a political battle on the stage.
Satire can always be found everywhere. A people without love for satire is a dead people.
It's not bad at all, getting a Nobel and making so many old fossils explode with rage.
I felt like an extraordinary hero. I was only five or six and I had the whole of life in my hands. Even if I had been driving the carriage of the sun I could not have felt any better.
Even before Europe was united in an economic level or was conceived at the level of economic interests and trade, it was culture that united all the countries of Europe. The arts, literature, music are the connecting link of Europe.
In a way, the American side descended to Saddam's level, which happens often in these types of circumstances. That is why the people in Iraq do not accept the current state of affairs.
It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.
Although, this is often used with negative connotations, I see ideology as an inherent part of culture.
All forms of power - even based on the consensus of the democratic system - react when they are being attacked, or when those who exercise power become a target.
We had extremely democratic town councils in medieval Italy which knew the value of working together, and every now and then, down the centuries, this spirit returns.
Every time you touch those who have power over the media, they seek to stop you.
Nevertheless, the mode, the justification, and all the games involved in this war were dishonest.
Life has always treated me well. I therefore won't mind leaving it behind.
I'm not afraid of death, but I'm not courting it, either. If you have lived well, it is the fair conclusion to life.
At the root of everything I write is tragedy.
Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.
Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.
We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics... but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression.
For some time it's been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.
It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.'
When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.
With comedy I can search for the profound.
I'm an idiot who won the Literature Nobel Prize.
