Ingmar Bergman Quotes
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In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.
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I dream about doing a film about once a week.
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I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
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I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.
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If you have a faith, if you've some deep conviction, whether you're a Nazi or a Communist or what the hell else you are - then you can sacrifice yourself and others to your faith. But from the moment you've no faith - from that moment you live in a deep inner confusion - from then on you're exposed to what Strindberg calls 'the powers'.
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I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.
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My education was very tough.
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When you're as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life.
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On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against.
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If I don't create, I don't exist.
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I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life.
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I was bloody ill-tempered when I was young.
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The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy.
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The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.
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I am extremely suspicious of dreams, apparitions and visions, both in literature and in films and plays. Perhaps it's because mental excesses of this sort smack too much of being 'arranged.'
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I am forever living in my childhood.
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My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.
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People ask what are my intentions with my films - my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct.
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Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.
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We didn't know that Mother had gone through a passionate love affair or that Father suffered from severe depression. Mother was preparing to break out of her marriage, Father threatening to take his own life.
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I've never liked Welles as an actor, because he's not really an actor. In Hollywood you have two categories, you talk about actors and personalities. Welles was an enormous personality, but when he plays Othello, everything goes down the drain, you see, that's when he's croaks. In my eyes he's an infinitely overrated filmmaker.
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For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.
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I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.
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I have such difficulty calming down - my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro.