Alfredo quotes from Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)

Alfredo

Get out of here! Go back to Rome. You're young and the world is yours. I'm old. I don't want to hear you talk anymore. I want to hear others talking about you. Don't come back. Don't think about us. Don't look back. Don't write. Don't give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don't come see me. I won't let you in my house. Understand?

Thank you. For everything you've done for me.

Alfredo

Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt

Alfredo

Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.

Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?

Alfredo

No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.

Alfredo

Now listen. I got into this business at age ten. Back then, we didn't have fancy machines. Movies were silent. You turned the projector by hand with a crank. All the livelong day! And that damn crank was so hard. If you got tired and slowed down a bit, like a shot - voom - everything went up in flames.

So why not teach me? Now that there's no crank and it's easier.

Alfredo

Because I don't want to. This is no job for you. You're like a slave - and always by yourself. You see a film 100 times. You've nothing else to do. You talk to Greta Garbo and Tyrone Power like an idiot. You work like a dog. Even holidays - Easter, Christmas. You only get Good Friday off. And if they hadn't stuck Christ on a cross we'd even work then.

So why don't you change jobs?

Alfredo

Because I'm a nitwit. Who else around here could run a projector? Nobody. It takes an imbecile like me. I never had any luck

They tell me you never go out and you never talk to anybody. Why?

Alfredo (Older)

You know how it is. Sooner or later a time comes when it's all the same whether you talk or not. So you might as well shut up.