Ingmar Bergman Quotes - Page 3

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• Well, we're grasping for two things at once. Partly for communion with others - that's the deepest instinct in us. And partly, we're seeking security. By constant communion with others we hope we shall be able to accept the horrible fact of our total solitude.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Two, Solitude, Able

  "Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman" by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima, translated by Paul Britten Austin, 1973.

  9 Copy quote

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Lying, Self, Portraiture

  "Ingmar's self portrait" by Ingmar Bergman, 1957.

  16 Copy quote

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Eye, Individuality, Deny

  Ingmar Bergman (1956). “The seventh seal: a film”

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• I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Beach, Dog, Prayer

  Ingmar Bergman (1990). “Images: my life in film”, Arcade Publishing

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Art, Attitude, Political

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• Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death - this infantile fixation of mine - was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry - with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.'

  Ingmar Bergman

  Night, Feelings, Arrogance

  Interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, 1971.

  10 Copy quote

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Over You, Feelings, Trying

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Moving, Way, Fields

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Sorry, Humility, Pride

  Interview with Torsten Manns, as quoted in Stig Bjoerkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima "Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman" translated by Paul Britten Austin, 1973.

  15 Copy quote

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Writing, Skeletons, Flesh

  The New York Times, January 22, 1978.

  16 Copy quote

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Thinking, Watches, Awful

  "Bergman 'depressed' by own films". news.bbc.co.uk. April 10, 2004.

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Dream, Reflection, Directors

  "The Magic Lantern". Book by Ingmar Bergman, www.indiewire.com. 1987.

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• I have thus decided to make a certain film and now begins the complicated and difficult-to-master work. To transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones and scents into words and sentences in a readable or at least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Atmosphere, Scent, Scripts

  8 Copy quote

• Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh - they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Couple, Attitude, Directors

  "Sydsvenska Dagbladet", Swedish daily newspaper, May 2002.

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• When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Fashion, Art, Play

  "Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman" by Ingmar Bergman, (Introduction), 1960.

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  People, Mind, Modern

  "Fictional character: Jöns". "The Seventh Seal", 1957.

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

  Ingmar Bergman

  Hands, Want, Faces

  "Fictional character: Antonius Block". "The Seventh Seal", 1957.

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Character, Men, Trying

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• When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Play, Imagination, Feelings

  "Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman" by Ingmar Bergman, (Introduction), 1960.

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Art, Way, Causes

  Ingmar Bergman, Raphael Shargel (2007). “Ingmar Bergman: Interviews”

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• I am conscious about myself and everything, and then suddenly, or slowly, my conscious fades out. Switches off. And it's not existing, and that's a marvelous feeling. That from existing, I am not existing. And at that moment, nothing can happen to me.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Feelings, Moments, Conscious

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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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  People, Giving, Answers

  Ingmar Bergman (1956). “The seventh seal: a film”

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Hate, Doors, Darkness

  Ingmar Bergman, Raphael Shargel (2007). “Ingmar Bergman: Interviews”, p.169, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• 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.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Writing, Gone, Lines

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• Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Fabric, Artistic, License

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