If we succeed with something, that is only because others are in need of what e have produced. And the more success we have with something, the more people require that we express it. So it goes without saying, as a result of this we in principle never win out, others win. We always lose.
Art is born out of an ill-designed world.
A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.
Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.
My purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness.
Unspoken feelings are unforgettable.
I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.
History is not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.
If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.
The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him.
If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.
Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual.
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.
A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts – for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.
We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns.
Where am I when I’m not in reality or in my imagination?
When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.
I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. they say it closely resembles death.
Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.
Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe, being linked with that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities.