Ingmar Bergman Quotes

I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality.

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.

Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive.

Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.

We make each other alive; it doesn’t make a difference if it hurts.

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.

My basic view of things is - not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer.

There is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect.

There's always a tension in me between my urge to destroy and my will to live... Every morning I wake up with a new wrath, a new suspiciousness, a new desire to live.

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

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.

I could always live in my art but never in my life

First, I write down all I know about the story, at length and in detail. Then I sink the iceberg and let some of it float up just a little.

I know, of course, that by using film we can bring in other previously unknown worlds, realities beyond reality.

I feel very strongly that I’m surrounded by other realities.

Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

One of ennui's most terribel components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it.

To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure. It's not only the artist I'm sorry for. It's just that I know exactly where he feels most humiliated.

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

All of us collect fortunes when we are children. A fortune of colors, of lights, and darkness, of movement, of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to his fortune when grown up.

Death: Do you never stop questioning? Antonius Block: No. I never stop.

To feel. To trust the feeling. I long for that

Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.

I think I have made just one picture that I really like.

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause, steal if there was no way out, killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art.

The older I become, the more I think about my mother.

The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.

Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit, the echo alone reaching me, striking without warning, a child weeping uninhibitedly, imprisoned forever.

Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure.

I am so 100 percent Swedish... Someone has said a Swede is like a bottle of ketchup - nothing and nothing and then all at once - splat. I think I'm a little like that.

I was a very unpleasant young man. If I met the young Ingmar today I'd say, 'You're very talented and I'll try to help you, but I don't want anything else to do with you.

I have a lot of tics and phobias. I hate to travel. I hate to go to festivals. I hate it when somebody gets close behind me. I'm scared of the darkness. I hate open doors.

I think I'm Swedish because I like to live here on this island. You can't imagine the loneliness and isolation in this country. In that way, I'm very Swedish - I don't dislike to be alone.

Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes.

I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.

Growing older is like climbing a mountain: the higher you get, the more strength you need, but the further you see.

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

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.

Either I did away with that fear through writing, or in the course of writing, I discovered it was no longer so intrusive or threating. The bottom line is, it's gone.

I have always had the ability to attach my demons to my chariot.

One has to manage alone as best one can. (Karin Bergman)

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously?