Ingmar Bergman Quotes

From an early age onward, it was said that 'Ingmar has no sense of humor.'

I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have.

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.

This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously?

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life.

My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.

Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace.

For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.

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.

I would have been happier if I'd been anonymous.

I have always had the ability to attach my demons to my chariot. And they have been forced to make themselves useful.

Mother was actually a great doer and organizer. All the special occasions were directed by mother.

The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.

There are so many books I want to read. Difficult books. That's what I intend to do and what I'm longing for.

I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.

Only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise.

When you finish a film, you never want to see it again.

We always regret that we did not ask our parents more, really get to know them while they were alive.

To feel. To trust the feeling. I long for that

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 ...

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

My education was very tough.

You know I feel such tenderness for you. It's difficult to bear. I don't know what to do with my tenderness.

I am very shy with people I don't know.

The older I become, the more I think about my mother.

I have such difficulty calming down - my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro.

I make all my decisions on intuition.

You never know when I'm lying. So it would be more practical to believe what I say
-Pauline in In the Presence of a Clown

I dream about doing a film about once a week.

One has to manage alone as best one can. (Karin Bergman)

There is something joyous about not talking.

In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.

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.

If I don't create, I don't exist.

I know, of course, that by using film we can bring in other previously unknown worlds, realities beyond reality.

I was booed at the premiere of 'Miss Julie,' a remarkably stimulating experience.

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.

When you're as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life.

I am forever living in my childhood.

I always work with 18 friends.

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

I feel very strongly that I'm surrounded by other realities.

Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons.

Sara: As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't know.
Sara: You know so much, and you don't know anything.

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.

There is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect.

I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality.

I could always live in my art but never in my life

Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.

I think I have made just one picture that I really like ...

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.

Reality is perhaps not at all what I imagine. Perhaps it doesn't exist, in fact. Perhaps it only exists as a longing.

We make each other alive; it doesn't make a difference if it hurts.

When I'm on Faro, I'm never lonely.

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.

It's so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.

They said you were mentally healthy, but your madness is the worst

Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death.

Growing older is like climbing a mountain: the higher you get, the more strength you need, but the further you see.

I hate to travel. I don't go anywhere.

Everyone likes happiness, no one likes pain. But you can't have a rainbow without a little rain.

I was bloody ill-tempered when I was young.

The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left.

Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.

I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.

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.

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.

Necessary illusions enable us to live.

I usually say I left puberty at 58.

I have always appreciated the honest brutality of the international film world. One need never doubt one's worth in the market. Mine was zero.

Faith is a torment, did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call.

We're thankful for the horrors we are used to. The unknown ones are worst

Death: Do you never stop questioning?
Antonius Block: No. I never stop.