The Indomitable Sophia Loren

Happy 77th birthday, you sexy thing.

Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one.

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.

The only people who never make mistakes are the ones who don’t do anything. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for living a full life.

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

I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn’t and it really doesn’t have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips.

It’s a mistake to think that once you’re done with school you need never learn anything new.

Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.

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.

I can’t bear being seen naked. I’m not exactly a tiny woman.

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.

Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

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.”