Andrei Tarkovsky quotes

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
The meaning of religious truth is hope. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Objectivity can only be the author's and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people's ideas. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
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. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
History is not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards." In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to "fly upwards. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
An artist needs knowledge and the power of observation only so that he can tell from what he is abstaining, and to be sure that his abstention will not appear artificial or false. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
The Stalker seems to be weak, but essentially it is he who is invincible because of his faith and his will to serve others. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible. The absolute is only attainable through faith and in the creative act. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky