When I was young I was extremely scared of dying. But now I think it a very very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about
Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes.
I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does straight to our emotions deep into the twilight room of the soul.
Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.
I could always live in my art but never in my life
I have always had the ability to attach my demons to my chariot.
When you die you are extinguished. From being you will be transformed to non-being. A god does not necessarily dwell among our capricious atoms.
There is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly not via the intellect.
The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly exacting mistress.
Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit the echo alone reaching me striking without warning a child weeping uninhibitedly imprisoned forever.
People ask what are my intentions with my films - my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question and I usually give an evasive answer...
Death: Do you never stop questioning? Antonius Block: No. I never stop.
I know of course that by using film we can bring in other previously unknown worlds realities beyond reality.
Either I did away with that fear through writing or in the course of writing I discovered it was no longer so intrusive or threating. The bottom line is it's gone.
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.
Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get the more tired and breathless you become but your views become more extensive.
I am living permanently in my dream from which I make brief forays into reality.
Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
One has to manage alone as best one can. (Karin Bergman)
I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand show His face speak to me.
I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head an angel a devil - or perhaps a saint - out of stone.
Growing older is like climbing a mountain: the higher you get the more strength you need but the further you see.
One of ennui's most terribel components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it.
Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure...
Here in my solitude I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.
Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director] the one who invented a new language true to the nature of film as it captures life as a reflection life as a dream.
To humiliate and be humiliated I think is a crucial element in our whole social structure. It's not only the artist I'm sorry for. It's just that I know exactly where he feels most humiliated.
My basic view of things is - not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer.
I think I have made just one picture that I really like...
This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously?
The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
Film as dream film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does and goes directly to our feelings deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
We make each other alive; it doesn't make a difference if it hurts.
There's always a tension in me between my urge to destroy and my will to live... Every morning I wake up with a new wrath a new suspiciousness a new desire to live.
First I write down all I know about the story at length and in detail. Then I sink the iceberg and let some of it float up just a little.
Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.
Fellini Kurosawa and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way but expired suffocated by his own tediousness.
To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.
To feel. To trust the feeling. I long for that
A film causes me so many worries and such a lot of reactions that I have to love it in order to get over it and past it.
All of us collect fortunes when we are children. A fortune of colors of lights and darkness of movement of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to his fortune when grown up.
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause steal if there was no way out killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art.
The older I become the more I think about my mother.
I feel very strongly that I'm surrounded by other realities.
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.
I was a very unpleasant young man. If I met the young Ingmar today I'd say 'You're very talented and I'll try to help you but I don't want anything else to do with you.