Ingmar Bergman Quotes
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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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Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father.
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Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa.
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I was bloody ill-tempered when I was young.
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When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying. But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.
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I usually say I left puberty at 58.
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The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second.
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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 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 had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience about something so gravely serious as leaving your children is an affectation, a way of achieving a little suffering that can't for a moment be equal to the suffering you've caused.
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There is something joyous about not talking.
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I hate to travel. I don't go anywhere.
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Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death.
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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 was booed at the premiere of 'Miss Julie,' a remarkably stimulating experience.
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Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
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I make all my decisions on intuition.
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Sometimes, I probably do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.
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I think that for some time now I have been living with an anxiety which has had no tangible cause. It has been like having a toothache, without the conscientious dentist having been able to find anything wrong with the tooth or with the person as a whole.
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I have always appreciated the honest brutality of the international film world. One need never doubt one's worth in the market. Mine was zero.
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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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Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.
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Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
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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.