[T]he virtue of cinema is that it appropriates time, complete with that material reality to which it is indissolubly bound, and which surrounds us da… - Andrei Tarkovsky

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most extraordinary discoveries await us in the sphere of time . We know less about time than about anything else

A film in cinema is what in theatre would be realism — and vice versa.
In cinema — as in life — the text, the words, are refracted in everything
apart from the words themselves. The words mean nothing — words are water.