Simona Ventura

"At the age of nineteen, after my first sexual encounter, I became pregnant. I decided to have an abortion, a difficult choice that I would never make again in my life. It was a traumatic experience that happened just a few months before my final exams. My father still does not know, and the father of that child will never know."

"The Isola dei famosi where I invested my passion, blood, work and sweat has become something else, a kind of "Grande Fratello on the beach”."

"(About the Sanremo Music Festival 2004) The record companies wanted to destroy the event [...]. They didn't send any singers, they were all young people, almost all unknown or not signed to record companies. Marco Masini, who won with “Uomo volante”, was not signed to a record label at the time. [...] It was a precursor to today's talent shows, and with hindsight it is recognised as very innovative. [...] It was a train that passed by and I jumped on with my eyes closed. I knew there wouldn't be many opportunities. Sanremo gives you your presenter's licence, even if it was a very difficult, extremely difficult Sanremo."

"I would give up beauty. But then no one would want me anymore."

"If you're not smart, how can you survive in this world?"

"I've always been distant from politics. I'm extremely apolitical."

"There's no point in worrying. Every time the government changes, the Rai changes."

"Ours is a satirical programme. The important thing is that satire attacks power wherever it comes from. In Rome they say: whoever's turn it is, doesn't sulk. (talking about Quelli che il calcio)"

"[...] I am the most impartial person in the world. I have intrinsic, automatic equality."

"I want to work and live in peace. Does my product work? I'm here. Does my product not work? I'll open a pizzeria. That's it."

"I had a lot of red carpet treatment at Mediaset even though I was the last wheel on the bus. They even gave me better food in the canteen. The guys from Gialappa's tormented me: sing, talk, is it true or isn't it true?"

"My life is a diet. I should weigh around 60 kilos, size 42. If I go down to 59 kilos, my face falls. If I go up to 63 kilos, I look like a whale on TV. My problem is my bottom. And then my clothes."

"I am a showgirl, I have to be spectacular. I hate women who play it minimalist on television."

"A presenter is always a presenter; you must be credible and authoritative. Recording allows you to cut out dead time and give rhythm, but that doesn't mean that anyone can present. The narrator must be at the service of the programme and accompany the viewer."

"I like risky projects, I'm a soldier, not a general. I don't sit around waiting for phone calls, the things I'm given aren't easy. The fear of not being there, no, my past speaks for me and you can't erase it. I like to put myself out there, challenges are won and lost."

"Interviewer: Do you still divide people into two categories: good people and cockroaches? Simona Ventura: I divide them into two categories: good people and bad people. I don't fight people who are not decent, I just watch and move on."

"One hundred years after the first Futurist manifesto, Simona Ventura demonstrates the vitality of that movement. She sets television alight just as Marinetti set theatre evenings alight, sparking fights and taming them at the same time. Thirty seconds of Simona's free-wheeling commentary on air make Carlo Conti's well-mannered phrases and Barbara d'Urso's flirtatious introductions seem cloyingly academic. They become insipid and convoluted, obsolete and unpalatable, like the poems of Pascoli and Carducci."

"‘Absolutely yes’: Simona Ventura is no longer capable of saying “yes” or ‘no’. Like all children, and like Fedro from Grande Fratello, she feels the need to add the reinforcing adverb, even in contexts where it is totally unnecessary. This was pointed out to her yesterday during Quelli che il calcio. In a single evening, she managed to reach record heights; and yesterday she didn't hold back, closing the programme and handing over to q:it:Enrico Varriale with an ‘absolutely yes’."

"The problem with Cuccarini is that she is not as cynical as Maria De Filippi nor as chaotic as Simona Ventura. She truly believes in dancing, commitment and talent. At times, she risks becoming overly emotionally involved in the stories told by the contestants."

"Ventura is the only television star dressed by two designers at the same time. From the neck down to the knees, she wears Dolce & Gabbana, and from the knees down, she wears orthopaedic garments by Mario Gualerzi of Castiglion dei Pepoli."

"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 declares that he feels neither right nor left, Fabio Volo, who boasts of being 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 do not disturb, not realising that opportunism is a form of corruption."