Andrei Tarkovsky quotes - page 2

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me perfectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear rigid logical development of plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life-love and sacrifice. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
My purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for? View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The man who has stolen in order never to thieve again remains a thief. Nobody who has ever betrayed his principles can have a pure relationship with life. Therefore when a film-maker says he will produce a pot-boiler in order to give himself the strength and the means to make the film of his dreams - that is so much deception, or worse, self-deception. He will never now make his film. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
One can only be staggered by the hubris of modern artists if we compare them, say, to the humble builders of Chartres Cathedral whose names are not even known. The artist ought to be distinguished by selfless devotion to duty; but we forgot about that a long time ago. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
No one component of a film can have any meaning in isolation: it is the film that is the work of art. And we can only talk about its components rather arbitrarily, dividing it up artificially or the sake of theoretical discussion. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
The whole concept of the avant-garde in art is meaningless. I can see what it means when applied to sport, for instance. But to apply it to art would be to accept the idea of progress in art; and though progress has an obvious place in technology - more perfect machines, capable of carrying out their functions better and more accurately - how can anyone be more advanced in art? How could Thomas Mann be said to be better than Shakespeare? View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
It seems to me that the individual today stands at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a new way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, to turn to God. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
What is Bresson's genre? He doesn't have one. Bresson is Bresson. He is a genre in himself. Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, Dovzhenko, Vigo, Mizoguchi, Bunuel - each is identified with himself. The very concept of genre is as cold as the tomb. And is Chaplin - comedy? No: he is Chaplin, pure and simple; a unique phenomenon, never to be repeated. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Art symbolises the meaning of our existence. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
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? View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
What is the essence of the director's work? We could define it as sculpting in time. View quote
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. (Andrei Tarkovsky)
I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical. View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky