But how can I put a name to what it is that I want? How am I to know that I really don’t want what I want, or that I really don’t want what I don’t want? These are intangibles that the moment you name them their meaning evaporates like jellyfish in the sun.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky Quotes

If a writer, despite his natural gifts, gives up writing because no one will publish him, then he is no writer. The artist is distinguished by his urge to create, which by very definition is a concomitant of talent.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

He, who doesn’t know why he lives, cannot feel love for people or for life itself. I don’t love myself enough, so I don’t love people enough. One of my major defects is impatience: I try to get rid of it, but i can’t. I am not tolerant enough for my age. I suffer for this, because i can’t approach people with sympathy. They annoy me.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

All that I wanted was to tempt into life things that wanted to come out of me.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Why do I feel this alone? Basically, because I’ve always been alone. I’ve always been alone. And alone I’ll be. It’s about time I become aware of it and never forget it.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

I love your eyes, my darling friend, Their play so passionate and bright’ning, When a sudden stare up you send, And like a heaven-blown lightning, It’d take in all from end to end But there’s more that I admire: Your eyes when they’re downcast In bursts of love-inspired fire And through the eyelash goes fast A somber, dull call of desire...

— Andrei Tarkovsky

No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

The image in cinema is based on the ability to present as an observation one’s own perception of an object.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

We all either underestimate each other, or else exaggerate each other’s virtues. Very few people are capable of assessing others as they deserve. It is a particular gift. In fact I would even say that only the great are capable of it.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

I believe in one thing: the human spirit is immortal and indestructible. In the beyond there could be anything, it is of no importance whatsoever. What we call death is not death. It’s a rebirth. A caterpillar becomes a cocoon. I think there is a life after death and it is that that is unnerving. It would be so much simpler to conceive of oneself as a telephone cord that is unplugged. Then you could live any way that you wanted. God would have no importance of any kind.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

But how can I put a name to what it is that I want? How am I to know that I really don’t want what I want, or that I really don’t want what I don’t want? These are intangibles that the moment you name them their meaning evaporates like jellyfish in the sun.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

I feel restricted, my soul is restricted inside me, I need another living space.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Let them laugh at their passions.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Masterpieces, not always distinguished or distinguishable among all the works with pretensions to genius, are scattered about the world like warning notices in a mine field.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something wrong with the way I live. Something false about everything I do. Even when I want to do something good; I feel that it’s only in order to seem a better person.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience – and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

It is obvious to everyone that man’s material aggrandisement has not been synchronous with spiritual progress. The point has been reached where we seem to have a fatal incapacity for mastering our material achievements in order to use them for our own good. We have created a civilisation which threatens to annihilate mankind.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

If two people have been able to experience the same thing even once, they will be able to understand each other.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

Music miraculously penetrates your very soul.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

The only function of consciousness is to produce fabrications. True knowledge is achieved in the heart and in the soul.

— Andrei Tarkovsky
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