"في طفولتي اقترحت أمي أن أقرأ " الحرب والسلام" للمرة الأولى، ولسنوات طويلة بعد ذلك كانت أمي غالبا ما تستشهد بمقاطع من الرواية ملفتة نظري الى دقة وبرا… - Andrei Tarkovsky

...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.

Everything is conditioned by necessity of one kind or another; and if it were actually possible to find a person in conditions of total freedom, he would be like some deep water fish that had been dragged up to the surface. It's curious to reflect that Rublyov worked within the strictures of the canon! And the longer I live in the West the more curious and equivocal freedom seems to me. Freedom to take drugs? To kill? To commit suicide?

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.