Top 83 Andrei Tarkovsky Quotes
#1. MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#2. I'VE NOTICED, FROM MY EXPERIENCE, IF THE EXTERNAL, EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF IMAGES IN A FILM ARE BASED ON THE FILMMAKER'S OWN MEMORY, ON THE KINSHIP OF ONE'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE FABRIC OF THE FILM, THEN THE FILM WILL HAVE THE POWER TO AFFECT THOSE WHO SEE IT.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#3. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#4. All that I wanted was to tempt into life things that wanted to come out of me.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#5. Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe, being linked with that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#7. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?
Andrei Tarkovsky
#8. Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#9. I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. they say it closely resembles death.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#10. I think in fact that unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#12. I have a horror of tags and labels. I don't understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman's "symbolism". Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#13. What will our children be like ? A lot depends on us. But it's up to them as well. What must be alive in them is a striving for freedom. That depends on us. People who have been born into slavery find it hard to lose the habit.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#14. I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#15. 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
#16. The film [Stalker] 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#17. THE ARTISTIC IMAGE IS ALWAYS A METONYM, WHERE ONE THING IS SUBSTITUTED FOR ANOTHER, THE SMALLER FOR THE GREATER. TO TELL OF WHAT IS LIVING, THE ARTIST USES SOMETHING DEAD; TO SPEAK OF THE INFINITE, HE SHOWS THE FINITE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#18. If we succeed with something, that is only because others are in need of what e have produced. And the more success we have with something, the more people require that we express it. So it goes without saying, as a result of this we in principle never win out, others win. We always lose
Andrei Tarkovsky
#19. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#20. People who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#21. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#22. I somehow think that it's better to screen inferior literature, which nonetheless contains the seed of something real- which can be developed in the film and grow into something wonderful as a result of going through your hands
Andrei Tarkovsky
#23. 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?
Andrei Tarkovsky
#24. A child doesn't have to be a prodigy. He has to be a child. The only thing that matters is that he shouldn't become 'stuck' in childishness.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#25. ALL ART, OF COURSE, IS INTELLECTUAL, BUT FOR ME, ALL THE ARTS, AND CINEMA EVEN MORE SO, MUST ABOVE ALL BE EMOTIONAL AND ACT UPON THE HEART.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#26. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#27. When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#28. 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
Andrei Tarkovsky
#30. In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#31. An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#32. The Stalker seems to be weak, but essentially it is he who is invincible because of his faith and his will to serve others.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#33. Substitution ... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#34. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#35. Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#36. A child doesn't have to be a prodigy. The only thing that matters is that he should't become 'stuck' in childishness
Andrei Tarkovsky
#37. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#38. Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#39. A poet is someone who can use a single image to send a universal message.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#40. Masterpieces, not always distinguished or distinguishable among all the works with pretensions to genius, are scattered about the world like warning notices in a mine field.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#41. Little plots and stories, acted out and screened, can't possibly be called cinema. They have nothing whatever to do with cinema. A cinematographic work is above all a work which would not be possible in any other art form. In other words. it can be created by means of cinema, and cinema alone
Andrei Tarkovsky
#42. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#43. The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#44. Perhaps cinema is the most personal art, the most intimate. In cinema only the author's intimate truth will be convincing enough for the audience to accept.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#45. 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
#46. We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#47. The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#49. My purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#51. For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most extraordinary discoveries await us in the sphere of time . We know less about time than about anything else
Andrei Tarkovsky
#52. For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#53. I felt all the time that for the film to be a success the texture of the scenery and the landscapes must fill me with definite memories and poetic associations
Andrei Tarkovsky
#54. 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
Andrei Tarkovsky
#55. Late this evening I looked at the sky and saw the stars. I felt as if it was the first time I had ever looked at them.
I was stunned.
The stars made an extraordinary impression on me
Andrei Tarkovsky
#56. Objectivity can only be the author's and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#57. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#58. I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#59. We all either underestimate each other, or else exaggerate each other's virtues. Very few people are capable of assessing others as they deserve. It is a particular gift. In fact I would even say that only the great are capable of it.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#60. An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty
Andrei Tarkovsky
#61. 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
#62. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#63. The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#64. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#66. I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#67. A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#68. One doesn't need a lot to be able to live. The great thing is to be free in your work. Ofcourse it's important to print or exhibit, but if that's not possible you are still left with the most important thing of all
being able to work without asking anybody's permission.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#69. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#70. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#71. I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#72. If a writer, despite his natural gifts, gives up writing because no one will publish him, then he is no writer. The artist is distinguished by his urge to create, which by very definition is a concomitant of talent.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#73. Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#74. In the case of someone who is spiritual receptive, it is possible to talk of an analogy between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely religious experience. Arts acts above all on the soul shaping its spiritual structure.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#75. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#76. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#77. My aim is to place cinema among the other art forms. To put it on a par with music, poetry, prose, etc.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#78. We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#79. 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#80. IN CINEMA IT IS NECESSARY NOT TO EXPLAIN, BUT TO ACT UPON THE VIEWER'S FEELINGS, AND THE EMOTION WHICH IS AWOKEN IS WHAT PROVOKES THOUGHT.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#82. A film in cinema is what in theatre would be realism - and vice versa.
In cinema - as in life - the text, the words, are refracted in everything
apart from the words themselves. The words mean nothing
words are water.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#83. Being silent for a while is good. Words can't really express a person's emotions.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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