Albano Carrisi

"(About Putin and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine) He, with all his potential, with all the good things he has done for Russia, with this sense of peace he has sown for many years, now forces his people to cross a country called Ukraine with tanks, guns, rifles, and children fleeing with their mothers. [...] We cannot remain indifferent in the face of this sowing of death. We need life, we need peace. Instead of firing cannons, throw bread and medicine to those in need."

"I met Putin, I sang for him, I liked him in the past and now I don't like him anymore, but I was sorry to see myself described as “Putin's friend” in recent days. Unfortunately, I am not his friend. If I were his friend, I would take a nice walk with him in the Kremlin and say to him: let's sit down for five minutes with a nice bottle of wine, or vodka, or pure water. Let's talk about it. It is not right to attack a nation, a country, a family; it is absurd. Now you have to deal with history."

"I'm saying this for the first time: the problem was marijuana. Romina smoked that junk up to four times a day. And she had been doing it for years, even before Ylenia disappeared. She was a different woman. She smoked and was cheerful. When the effect wore off, she became sad and cried. She was unrecognizable. She no longer expressed that attachment to things, that passion for life, for what we had experienced and built over those years. It was the beginning of the end."

"A glass of whiskey before concerts. On the advice of Placido Domingo: “It frees up your esophagus and vocal cords,” he told me. A cure-all."

"Ever since I was a child, I sang all the songs by Domenico Modugno and Claudio Villa. My father had bought a radio, and I sang along to all the songs they played. It was a kind of karaoke. When I finished, people outside would applaud."

"I always lived with her [Romina Power] knowing that it could be the last day. But I always defended our marriage tooth and nail. My ego and alter ego wage their inner wars inside me. But when the end of the marriage came, it was really hard to accept. Love can be born and it can die, it is written, but I didn't like how it died."

"I sent the first check for nine million to my father in Cellino to buy a tractor."

"I am a conservative. If I analyze my life, I have never made any big changes."

"I'm not afraid of anything. I accepted the end of love, but what came after was truly unbearable. Otherwise, I would still be looking for opportunities to meet someone. But now I've made my choice."

"My father needed help with his fields, my mother pushed me to study."

"I think Putin is right. That part of Ukraine was Russia and is Russia. Did you know that Khrushchev was Ukrainian too? The separatists are fighting to remain Russian. It's like Istria: we all know it's Italian, even though we accepted the diktats of the superpowers."

"The separatists are asking for help: if a people wants to secede from a state, why not? A referendum was held in Crimea, 90 percent wanted to stay with Russia, and that was accepted."

"(About Vladimir Putin) They call him a dictator, but he has the people on his side."

"Putin has stood by the West even in the worst of times. He has always told us: I am your friend. However, if we are ungrateful and fail to understand his policy in Ukraine, then it is only right that he should say to us: be careful, I have Russia in my hands... No one did anything to Bush when he killed Saddam, who was no longer a threat. Yet Putin, who wants to help the Russians, is called a dictator. He is not attacking anyone. He is simply defending himself."

"We're selling everything now. From Perugina to Fiat, there's nothing left here. Are we Italians, or do we just say we are?"

"History defends us, and will continue to defend us in the future, but we can't keep thinking only about Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We're tied to memories, to our open-air museum."

"(About Vladimir Putin) I have supported him since before he was in the spotlight. He is a great man. He has a religious sense of life. He rules with an iron fist, and I see nothing wrong with that."

"I was having dinner at Il Dollaro, a restaurant in Milan that cost 660 lire, the equivalent of one dollar. Instead of spaghetti, the waiter brought a guitar and started singing. “What a voice!” I thought. It was Al Bano. During the day he worked at Breda, in the evening he waited tables. I told him to come to Rai the next morning."