كان يوجد مرحاض خاص بي وحدي. وربما كانت هذه مساهمتي الأكثر استمرارًا في تاريخ المسرح - Ingmar Bergman

As far as I recall, it's a question of the total dissolution of all notions of an other-worldly salvation. During those years this was going on in me all the time and being replaced by a sense of the holiness — to put it clumsily — to be found in man himself. The only holiness which really exists. A holiness wholly of this world. And I suppose that's what the final sequence tries to express. The notion of love as the only thinkable form of holiness. At the same time another line of development in my idea of God begins here, one that has perhaps grown stronger over the years. The idea of the Christian God as something destructive and fantastically dangerous, something filled with risk for the human being and bringing out in him dark destructive forces instead of the opposite.

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.

CABALLERO: Por ello, yo quiero saber. No deseo creer. Ni suponer, sino saber... Deseo que Dios me tienda su mano, ver su rostro y que me hable.
MUERTE: Pero se calla.

CABALLERO: Así es... Le grito en medio de la noche, pero es como si no hubiera nadie en ningún sitio.
MUERTE: Puede ser que no haya nadie.

CABALLERO: Sí, ya lo he pensado. Pero, en ese caso, la vida sería un horror absurdo. Nadie es capaz de vivir con la Muerte ante sus ojos y creyendo que todo ha de desembocar en la nada más absoluta.
MUERTE: La mayor parte de los hombres no piensan ni en la Muerte ni en la Nada.

CABALLERO: Sin embargo, tiene que llegar un día en que se encuentren sobre el borde mismo de la vida.... y entonces habrán de mirar hacia la Noche.
MUERTE: En efecto. Y ese día puede ser cualquiera...