Ingmar Bergman Quotes

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

Every artist who creates intense depictions of his own problems, which he believes not only to be important to him, but also to others, needs to use himself.

We were supposed to collaborate once, and along with Kurosawa make one love story each for a movie produced by Dino de Laurentiis. I flew down to Rome with my script and spent a lot of time with Fellini while we waited for Kurosawa, who finally couldn't leave Japan because of his health, so the project went belly-up. Fellini was about to finish Satyricon. I spent a lot of time in the studio and saw him work. I loved him both as a director and as a person, and I still watch his movies, like La Strada and that childhood rememberance...

Sara: As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't know.
Sara: You know so much, and you don't know anything.

I had recklessly dared to do what I wouldn't dare to do today. The knight performs his morning prayer. When he is ready to pack up his chess set, he turns around, and there stands Death. 'Who are you?' asks the knight. 'I am Death.' Bengt Ekerot and I agreed that Death should have the features of a white clown. An amalgamation of a clown mask and a skull. It was a delicate and dangerous artistic move, which could have failed. Suddenly, an actor appears in whiteface, dressed all in black, and announces that he is Death. Everyone accepted the dramatic feat that he was Death, instead of saying, 'Come on now, don't try to put something over us! You can't fool us! We can see that you are just a talented actor who is painted white and clad in black! You're not Death at all!' But nobody protested. That made me feel triumphant and joyous.

Here in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity. It oozes out of me like a broken tube of toothpaste; it doesn't want to stay within the confines of my body. A strange feeling of weight and volume. Soul volume perhaps, which rises like clouds of smoke and envelops my body.

The time between midnight and dawn when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most palatable. It is the hour when the sleepless are pursued by their sharpest anxieties, when ghosts and demons hold sway. The hour of the wolf is also the hour when most children are born.

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

Helena Ekdahl, the famous actress – who was brought to Uppsala by her rich, young husband – who bought a theatre for her – and allowed her to play in it until he decided it was time to start a family.

Since at this time I was still very much in a quandary over religious faith, I placed my two opposing beliefs side by side, allowing each to state its case in its own way. In this manner, a virtual cease-fire could exist between my childhood piety and my newfound harsh rationalism. Thus, there are no neurotic complications between the knight and his vassals. Also, I infused the characters of Jof and Mia with something that was very important to me: the concept of the holiness of the human being. If you peel off the layers of various theologies, the holy always remains.

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. And 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

Its so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.

My play opens with an actor walking down into the audience, where he strangles the critic, then reads aloud from a little black book all the humiliations he has noted therein. Then he throws up on the audience, after which he exits and puts a bullet through his head.

What matters most of all in life is being able to make that contact with another human. Otherwise you are dead, like so many people today are dead… But if you can take that first step toward communication, toward understanding, toward love, then no matter how difficult the future may be – and have no illusions, even with all the love in the world, living can be hellishly difficult – then you are saved. This is all that really matters, isn’t it?

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don’t like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done.