Isabella Rossellini on her father Roberto Rossellini

from the Criterion DVD for Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis. The interview with Isabella Rossellini.
transcribed from about 15:00 into that interview.

A lot of people try to explain the essence of human beings. Freud might say sex. Somebody else says survival, fear of death. For my father, it was knowledge. He said that the way for me that is a man -- the essence of a man is that we have a brain. The brain needs to be nourished. I see the man as a human being on his tippy-toes looking further into the horizon -- and that was the essence of humans. And that is the essence of his cinema.