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.
Ingmar Bergman
I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.
For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.
There is something joyous about not talking.
The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times, and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage.
If I don't create, I don't exist.
I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life.
My education was very tough.
I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.
Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa.
I think that for some time now I have been living with an anxiety which has had no tangible cause. It has been like having a toothache, without the conscientious dentist having been able to find anything wrong with the tooth or with the person as a whole.
I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work - he is in touch with the child. He is not rational; he is impulsive and extremely emotional.
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons.
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.
The only thing I consider appalling would be to suddenly become a vegetable and a burden on other people. A soul slowly dying out, trapped in a body in which the insides gradually sabotage me - that, I think, would be terrifying.
The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left.
Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death.
My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.
In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.
I had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience about something so gravely serious as leaving your children is an affectation, a way of achieving a little suffering that can't for a moment be equal to the suffering you've caused.
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: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy.
I was booed at the premiere of 'Miss Julie,' a remarkably stimulating experience.
I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.
I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have.
When I'm on Faro, I'm never lonely.
I have a feeling of complete balance. The sea, the house, the loneliness, the light. Everything is clearer. Much more precise. I have the feeling that I am living on a limit, and I'm crossing that limit sometimes.
From an early age onward, it was said that 'Ingmar has no sense of humor.'
Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father.
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
I was very much in love with my mother. She was a very warm and a very cold woman. When she was warm, I tried to come close to her. But she could be very cold and rejecting.
I hate to travel. I don't go anywhere.
I dream about doing a film about once a week.
Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.
I am extremely suspicious of dreams, apparitions and visions, both in literature and in films and plays. Perhaps it's because mental excesses of this sort smack too much of being 'arranged.'
I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
Sometimes, I probably do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.
I always work with 18 friends.
I am very shy with people I don't know.
The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second.
I usually say I left puberty at 58.
Mother was actually a great doer and organizer. All the special occasions were directed by mother.
When we came out from the Elysee palace, there was a gigantic limousine waiting for us and four police on motorcycles. It is probably one of the few times I have experienced my fame. I thought it was so fantastic that I laughed to the point of shouting.
I make all my decisions on intuition.
We always regret that we did not ask our parents more, really get to know them while they were alive.
I am forever living in my childhood.
When you're as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life.
