Fabio Fazio

"Zucchero is very fortunate: he writes and sings well. He entertains people, but what I find truly extraordinary is his enthusiasm. Zucchero is the only one who lets you hear an album before he releases it. This gives it meaning and makes us realise that this is the work of an artist. Now that he has achieved fame and international recognition, he continues to put himself out there in the most authentic way, not inventing things to impress, but rediscovering and searching for what he wants to say about himself and his roots. This is truly rare. If you think about it, there is not much difference between Zucchero's songs and the photographs in which he is portrayed with his grandmother. It is as if, unconsciously, he is trying to tell the story of that photograph through his profession."

"Rodotà has always been committed to the affirmation of rights for all. And rights are the foundation of every action and thought."

"It's not that I'm cynical, I'm from Liguria. And Ligurians have a practical sense of things, there's no point pretending..."

"Since words have enormous power on television, I think they should always be used with respect for the person you are addressing and for those who are listening to you. ‘Do-goodism’ is a stupid definition, in the sense that it is a stupid ‘simplification’, which I dispute. What is the opposite of buonismo, being mean and cynical? To get what, a headline in the next day's newspaper? To build your career by hurting someone else? We are full of self-proclaimed opinion makers who make a career out of talking badly about others. In life, you can be famous either because you build something or because you destroy something."

"Political interference has never been so strong on public television. I am talking about company management, advertising limits, and salaries. There is no company in the world that can survive in the market with someone from outside dictating rules and setting limits."

"(About the COVID-19 pandemic) It has become clear that those who do not pay taxes are not only committing a crime but also a felony: if there are not enough beds and ventilators, it is also their fault."

"In love, a small gesture can make up for a lot: come on, take off your underwear."

"Love is the most beautiful thing in life. Like pussy."

"‘Want to come up for a drink?’ ‘No, come on, let's fuck here.’"

"Today's television wants to do everything except tell the truth. It is television of the plausible, not of the real. And our programme with Roberto Saviano, Vieni via con me, aims to be an act of truth, a testimony of love. It is not a political programme, nor is it investigative journalism. It is a story of today's Italy."

"I've had enough of Padania. What is it? Where are its borders? I am from Savona, where we speak a different dialect from that of Genoa, which is forty kilometres away, let alone Trieste or Rimini. I'm fed up with the confusion between the inhabitants of northern Italy and the voters of the Lega. There are many northerners who do not vote for the Lega and feel Italian, not Padanian."

"[Italy today] A frightened country. Paralyzed by fear. The global world looks to Italy and its style, which is not just about fashion but above all a way of life; just when Italy seems to have lost faith in the future, it does not believe that things can be better than they are now."

"There is a two-way relationship between the prime minister and the country. Italy couldn't wait for Berlusconi to come along, and Italy is the way it is because Berlusconi is there."

"I've been with Rai for twenty-seven years. I still have a year left on my contract. I remember the first time I went to Via Teulada: it was a legend becoming reality. I fear that the turning point came when the article was dropped, when ‘Rai’ became simply ‘Rai’: Rai and Mediaset. That was when people started saying ‘the company’, even though they knew that Rai could not, indeed should not, be just a company."

"I believe that a distinction must be made between enjoyment and exploitation. I am in complete agreement with the enjoyment of a good: beauty must be accessible and enjoyed by those who are interested in it. In my opinion, exploitation implies betrayal, not because it results in economic gain, but because it transforms that place into something else."

"We are using symbolic places for economic exploitation or simply because the architect who works on them will be noticed. It is one thing to prevent Pompeii from collapsing, it is quite another to rebuild it and turn it into Disneyland. It is important to understand the passing of time, the marks left by time. It makes sense to preserve, it makes less sense to improve or update; [...]. Things have value if you can see them with today's eyes, discover if they tell you something."

"What is built outside greatly influences what you build inside. [...] If you are in a beautiful place, your mood changes. We have neglected the beautiful things in life. We have built a world where only what can be monetised matters: even space and time."

"Everything that makes life beautiful is considered a luxury: knowledge is a luxury; and beauty is the future of knowledge. This is the only thing that makes things beautiful or ugly: if you know, if you are aware. Globalisation has swept away what has always been a characteristic of human beings: the search for beauty not as pure aestheticism, but on the contrary as self-construction."

"The line between pop and aesthetic catastrophe is blurred."

"He too is red, a cherry red that is unmatched even in the vermilion of Rai Tre. But he loves to play the opposite role. That of the innocent little priest without a parish, friend to all and enemy to none. In reality, in today's Rai, fragmented into sultanates, there is no one more partisan than him. His little hand is wrapped in grey velvet, but inside he hides a poisoned stiletto. It is with this blade that Fazio practises inflexible censorship. [...] Fazio had invited Pietro Ingrao [...]. In a fit of memory loss, the old communist leader claimed that the Italian Communist Party had distanced itself from the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. A complete falsehood, as history teaches us. But Fazio and the invited audience were careful not to object. Not even a murmur, a cough, a sidelong glance. Why? q:it:Edmondo Berselli, a free-thinking intellectual who recently passed away, explained it thus in L'Espresso: ‘Because at that moment, the senescent but not senile apotheosis of an impossible communism, a utopia, a great dream, an assault on heaven, was being celebrated. And so much the worse for the facts, if the facts interrupt the emotions’. Fazio is not interested in the truth. Especially when he paints a picture of Italian history and reality that clashes with his narrow political horizon."

"[He is] the classic communist with his heart on the left and his wallet on the right."

"Fabio, in my opinion, is incredibly well-prepared. I am constantly amazed by his ability to change: he switches from cinema to current affairs, from politics to history. He knows musicians and the history of music, and he always has a witty remark at the ready. This is not something that can be improvised. His skill is quite unique in Italy."

"Fazio is the mellifluous leftist. His eyes look like two eggs in a frying pan."

"He's boring, his guests are boring."

"But he's a total piece of shit! Everyone says he's nice, but it's not true! I completely disagree: he's the most cynical man I know."

"To be allowed on television, you have to belong to the new television species created during the Berlusconi years, but which is still in vogue. The figure of the paraculo, yes, write it down, the one who never takes sides, who blends in, who makes indifference his banner. [...] Names and surnames, as I do in show business. Bonolis, who claims to feel neither right nor left, Fabio Volo, who boasts of being a indifferent, Simona Ventura, who defines herself as equidistant, candidly adding that she worked at Mediaset while being pursued by rumours that she was Galliani's lover and that she let him believe it. [...] Gene Gnocchi, Fiorello, Fabio Fazio, Baudo himself. [...] They are the heroes of TV opportunism, the ones with the glossy masks. They work on the condition that they don't rock the boat, not realising that opportunism is a form of corruption."

"Minions (film) (dubbing into Italian)"

"Gino e Michele, Matteo Molinari, Anche le formiche nel loro piccolo s'incazzano. Opera omnia, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1997. ISBN 88-04-43263-2"