Ingmar Bergman Quotes

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

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

DESIREE: Don't forget, Madame, that love is a perpetual juggling of three balls. Their names are heart, word and sex. How easily these three balls can be juggled, and how easily one of them can be dropped.

The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic.

مرة أو مرتين في حياتي كلها روادتني فكرة الانتحار، وفي شبابي أقدمت على محاولة فاشلة، لكنني لم أنظر إليها بجدية. لقد كان فضولي عظيمًا وحبي للحياة قويًا وخوفي من الموت لا يتزعزع.

ومع ذلك فإن موقفي من الحياة يفترض وجود سيطرة مستمرة ولائقة على العلاقة بالواقع والتخيلات والأحلام. وعندما كانت تتعطل هذه السيطرة –وهو أمر لم يحدث لي من قبل حتى في طفولتي المبكرة- كانت انظمتي تصاب بالخلل وتتعرض هويتي للخطر، فأسمع صوت أنيني يشبه كلب جريح، نهضت من الكرسي وكنت على وشك أن أُلقي بنفسي من النافذة.

I think I am a better ghost than I am a human being.

It's so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. 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.

Necessary illusions enable us to live.

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought — or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain…

Only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise.

"Actually it deals ("as usual" I was about to say!) with Life, Love and Death. Because nothing in fact is more important. To occupy oneself with. To think of. To worry over. To be happy about. And so on."

I would have been happier if I'd been anonymous.

We're thankful for the horrors we are used to. The unknown ones are worst

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.