Ingmar Bergman Quotes

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

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.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to man has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.

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

When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence.

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

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.

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

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don’t like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done.

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

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

Perhaps we are the same person. Perhaps we have no limits; perhaps we flow into each other, stream through each other, boundlessly and magnificently. You bear terrible thoughts; it is almost painful to be near you. At the same time it is enticing. Do you know why?

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, “I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there’s something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it’s not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It’s not like I sit here philosophizing, because I’ve no talent for that. It’s just this thing about silence that’s so wonderful.

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

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

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

I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one.

I'll tell you something banal.We're emotional illiterates.And not only you and I-practically everybody,that's the depressing thing.We're taught everything about the body and about agriculture in Madagascar and about the square root of pi, or whatever the hell it's called,but not a word about the soul.We're abysmally ignorant,about both ourselves and others.There's a lot of loose talk nowadays to the effect that children should be brought up to know all about brotherhood and understanding and coexistence and equality and everything else that's all the rage just now.But it doesn't dawn on anyone that we must first learn something about ourselves and our own feelings.Our own fear and loneliness and anger.We're left without a chance,ignorant and remorseful among the ruins of our ambitions.To make a child aware of it's soul is something almost indecent.You're regarded as a dirty old man.How can you understand other people if you don't know anything about yourself?Now you're yawning,so that's the end of the lecture.

Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit, the echo alone reaching me, striking without warning, a child weeping uninhibitedly, imprisoned forever.

The time between midnight and dawn when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most palatable. It is the hour when the sleepless are pursued by their sharpest anxieties, when ghosts and demons hold sway. The hour of the wolf is also the hour when most children are born.

I want to stop. I want to stay on Fårö, and read the books I haven’t read, find out things I haven’t yet found out. I want to write things I haven’t written. To listen to music, and talk to my neighbors. To live together with my wife a very calm, very secure, very lazy existence, for the rest of my life.

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

الصداقة مثل الحب، وجوهر الصداقة يقوم على الصراحة والعاطفة والصدق. من المريح أن ترى وجه صديقك أو تسمع صوته بالهاتف وتتحدث معه حول أمور مؤلمة وملحّة، وتسمعه يعترف بما يخشى التفكير به. إن للصداقة لمسة من الحسيّة، فشكل الصديق ووجهه وعيناه وشفتاه وصوته وحركاته ونبرة صوته، كل هذا محفور فى ذهنك، مفتاح سرّى يمنحك الثقة لأن تبوح بنفسك فى صداقة حقيقية. إن علاقة الحب تنفجر متحولة إلى صراعات لا يمكن تفاديها، أما الصداقة فلا تحتاج إلى الرغبة نفسها من الاهتياج والتعقيم. فى أحيان كثيرة يلتصق الرمل بين أسطحة التواصل القابلة للخدش ويلى ذلك الأسف والصعوبات. أفكر وأقول لنفسى إننى أستطيع تدبير أمورى جيداً دون هذا الأحمق، ثم يمضى بعض الوقت ويظهر إحساس غير سار بفقدان هذا الشخص، إحساس يعبّر عن نفسه بمستويات مختلفة، واضحة أحياناً ومتكتمة غالباً. الصداقة لا تعتمد على الوعود والاحتجاجات أو على الزمان والمكان. الصداقة غير متطلبة إلا فى أمر واحد. انها تتطلب الصدق، وهو مطلبها الوحيد، ولكن الصعب.

I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light.[...] I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency.

We make an idol of our fear and that idol we call God.

Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. 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. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. 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.

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

One of ennui's most terribel components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it.

I think I am a better ghost than I am a human being.

وبطبيعة الأمور أصبحت السينما وسيلتي للتعبير. صرت أعبر عن نفسي بلغة لا تمر بطريق الكلام الذي أفتقر له, بالموسيقى التي لست متمكنا منها وبالرسم الذي أشعر نحوه ببرودة. فجأة صار لدي إمكانية للاتصال مع العالم المحيط بلغة تنتقل من الروح إلى الروح وبصور بيانية تفلت, بشكل سبق تقريبا, من سيطرة العقل.

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

DESIREE: Don't forget, Madame, that love is a perpetual juggling of three balls. Their names are heart, word and sex. How easily these three balls can be juggled, and how easily one of them can be dropped.

When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. 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.

Necessary illusions enable us to live.

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

The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic.

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

Actually it deals ("as usual" I was about to say!) with Life, Love and Death. Because nothing in fact is more important. To occupy oneself with. To think of. To worry over. To be happy about. And so on.

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

Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.

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

Its so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.

Sometimes I think my ability to concentrate is being nibbled away by the internet; other times I think it's being gulped down in huge, Jaws-shaped chunks. In those quaint days before the internet, once you made it to your desk there wasn't much to distract you. You could sit there working or you could just sit there. Now you sit down and there's a universe of possibilities – many of them obscurely relevant to the work you should be getting on with – to tempt you. To think that I can be sitting here, trying to write something about Ingmar Bergman and, a moment later, on the merest whim, can be watching a clip from a Swedish documentary about Don Cherry – that is a miracle (albeit one with a very potent side-effect, namely that it's unlikely I'll ever have the patience to sit through an entire Bergman film again). Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the backs of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called "this twittering world", I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life. Exactly the same thing has happened now that it's possible to get hold of out-of-print books instantly on the web. That's great too. But one of the side incentives to travel was the hope that, in a bookstore in Oregon, I might finally track down a book I'd been wanting for years. All of this searching and tracking down was immensely time-consuming – but only in the way that being alive is time-consuming.

Jöns: But feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive!

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

إن المستحيل مغرٍ ولا يوجد لدي ما أخسره

مرة أو مرتين في حياتي كلها روادتني فكرة الانتحار، وفي شبابي أقدمت على محاولة فاشلة، لكنني لم أنظر إليها بجدية. لقد كان فضولي عظيمًا وحبي للحياة قويًا وخوفي من الموت لا يتزعزع. ومع ذلك فإن موقفي من الحياة يفترض وجود سيطرة مستمرة ولائقة على العلاقة بالواقع والتخيلات والأحلام. وعندما كانت تتعطل هذه السيطرة –وهو أمر لم يحدث لي من قبل حتى في طفولتي المبكرة- كانت انظمتي تصاب بالخلل وتتعرض هويتي للخطر، فأسمع صوت أنيني يشبه كلب جريح، نهضت من الكرسي وكنت على وشك أن أُلقي بنفسي من النافذة.

Here in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity. It oozes out of me like a broken tube of toothpaste; it doesn't want to stay within the confines of my body. A strange feeling of weight and volume. Soul volume perhaps, which rises like clouds of smoke and envelops my body.

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 once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought—or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain…

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

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.

Death: When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends. Antonius Block: And will you reveal your secrets? Death: I have no secrets. Antonius Block: So do you know nothing? Death: I am unknowing.

ياللجحيم! كيف بإمكاني أن أحصل على امرأة؟ أية امرأة؟ كان الجميع يتدبرون أمورهم ما عداي. أنا الذي كنت أمارس العادة السرية، أنا الشاحب، المتعرق، صاحب الهالات الزرقاء حول العينين، الضعيف القدرة على التركيز. إلى جانب كل هذا، كنت نحيلاً، منكس الرأس، سريع الغضب، البادئ بالصراخ والشجار، سئ العلامات بالمدرسة ومتورم الأُذنين من العقاب. لقد كانت السينما والمسرح هما ملاذيّ الوحيدين.

Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

It is always the case: if your tooth hurts, your tongue keeps going there. You are always conscious of a wound.

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

Film director Ingmar Bergman called it “the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are at their most powerful.

I make my films, Charlie. I do my lighting, place my camera angles and I tell the actors to walk this way and do this, and there you're supposed to cry and there you're in a rage, and we keep on doing it and keep it up like the very devil and we never give up. And then the audience sits there one evening, and if we're lucky they'll cry where we decided they would cry and laugh when we want them to - right. You know all that. That is the whole mystery, Charlie" - Georg Af Klercker in Ingmar Bergman's play "The Last Scream

It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, genetaring and degenerating itself.

My play opens with an actor walking down into the audience, where he strangles the critic, then reads aloud from a little black book all the humiliations he has noted therein. Then he throws up on the audience, after which he exits and puts a bullet through his head.

Man has made himself free, terribly and dizzyingly free. Religion and art are kept alive for the sake of sentimentality, as a conventional politeness toward the past, a benevolent solicitude of leisure's increasingly nervous citizens.

قالت لي: "الشيء الوحيد الممل فيك يا انجمار برجمان هو ولعك بالأشياء الصحيحة والمفيدة. يجب أن تتخلف عن هذا الولع فهو ولعك وهم مشكوك به، وسوف يخلق أمامك عقبات لن تجرؤ على تجاوزها. بجب أن تتصرف كالدكتور فاوست عند توماس مان، وتبحث عن عاهرة مصابة بالسفلس

إنّ من يحضّر عمله بشكل جيد وحده يمتلك الفرصة للارتجال..

No hay tiempo para discutir la soledad.

Aşk, bütün vebaların en karasıdır; kişi ondan ölebilseydi, aşkta biraz zevk olurdu.

Bu kusurlu dünyada her şey kusurluysa kendi kusursuz kusurluluğu içinde en kusursuz olanıdır aşk.

ფილმი სიზმარივითაა. ფილმი მუსიკასავითაა. არც ერთი სხვა სახეობა ისე არ აღწევს სულის სიღრმეებში, როგორც კინოხელოვნება. მხედველობის ნერვის მცირედი გაღიზიანება, შოკის ეფექტი: ოცდაოთხი ამონათებული კადრი წამში, მათ შორის კი სიბნელეა, თუმცა მხედველობის ნერვი მის აღქმას ვერ ასწრებს.

Edvard: Du har levat i en konstgjord värld, insnärd i konstgjorda känslor. Jag måste lära dig och dina barn att leva i verkligheten. Det är inte mitt fel att verkeligheten är ett helvete

In Woody Allen movies people stood in line for Ingmar Bergman films or Holocaust documentaries talking up media theory to pass the time. At 16 that was my idea of fun. Now that I live in New York I can tell you that people lined up for tickets don't debate theory. They talk about cute guys at the gym or whether or not they live within walking distance of a Krispy Kreme. I was such a young fogy that growing up involved becoming less mature.

Don’t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being. Not seeming, but being. Conscious at every moment. Vigilant. At the same time, the chasm between what you are to others and to yourself. The feeling of vertigo and the constant desire to at last be exposed — to be seen through, cut down, perhaps even annihilated. Every tone of voice is a lie, every gesture a falsehood, every smile a grimace. Commit suicide? Oh, no. That’s ugly. You don’t do that. But you can be immobile. You can fall silent. Then, at least, you don’t lie. You can close yourself in, shut yourself off. Then you don’t have to play roles, show any faces, or make false gestures. You think…but you see, reality is bloody-minded. Your hideout isn’t watertight. Life seeps in everything. You’re forced to react. No one asks if it’s real or unreal, if you’re true or false. It’s only in the theater the question carries weight — hardly even, there. I understand you, Elisabet. I understand your keeping silent, your immobility. That you’ve placed this lack of will into a fantastic system... I understand and I admire you. I think you should maintain this role until it’s played out, until it’s not longer interesting. Then you can leave it, just as you bit-by-bit leave all your roles.

On the whole, however, art is free, shameless, irresponsible, and, as I said: the movement is intense, almost feverish, like, it seems to me, a snakeskin full of ants. The snake itself has long been dead, eaten, deprived of its poison, but the skin moves, filled with meddlesome life.

One of the strongest feelings I remember from my childhood is, precisely, of being humiliated; of being knocked about by words, acts, or situations. Isn't it a fact that children are always feeling deeply humiliated in their relations with grown-ups and each other? I have a feeling children spend a good deal of their time humiliating one another. Our whole education is just one long humiliation, and it was even more so when I was a child.

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.

Every artist who creates intense depictions of his own problems, which he believes not only to be important to him, but also to others, needs to use himself.

I have always felt lonely in the world out there. That is why I escaped into filmmaking even though the feeling of community is an illusion.

Our human flesh needs touch and intimacy, what we get, or should get, from a mother--Woman. Shouts and whispers

When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow floating in the air like blue smoke—a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red.

Öylesine sınırlanmışız ki kendi kaygılarımızla, sürekli dönüp başa geliyoruz, öyle ki artık doğru ile yanlışı, yasadışı hevesle en saf ideal arasındaki farkı bile ayırt edemiyoruz. İngmar Bergman

WE DO OUR TWENTY minutes of meditation a day in the hope that, properly stilled, our minds will stop just reflecting back to us the confusion and multiplicity of our world but will turn to a silvery mist like Alice’s looking glass that we can step through into a world where the beauty that sleeps in us will come awake at last. We send scientific expeditions to Loch Ness because if the dark and monstrous side of fairy tales can be proved to exist, who can be sure that the blessed side doesn’t exist, too? I suspect that the whole obsession of our time with the monstrous in general—with the occult and the demonic, with exorcism and black magic and the great white shark—is at its heart only the shadow side of our longing for the beatific, and we are like the knight in Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, who tells the young witch about to be burned at the stake that he wants to meet the devil her master, and when she asks him why, he says, “I want to ask him about God. He, if anyone, must know.

عندما لا يكون الفيلم وثائقيًا فإنه حلم.. ولهذا فإن تاركوفسكي هو أعظمهم على الإطلاق. إنه يتحرك بحرية مطلقة في عوالم الأحلام دون ان يقدم شروحات. وماذا عليه أن يشرح أساسًا؟ إنه قادر على إخراج رؤياه بطريقة غير شائعة، لكنها في متناول الجميع. كل حياتي أمضيتها وأنا أدق أبواب الغرف التي كان تاركوفسكس يتحرك داخلها بحرية وطبيعية، وقد استطعت أن أدخل إليها أحيانًا، لكن معظم جهودي الواعية انتهت إلى فشل محرج، كما حدث في أفلام (بيضة الثعبان) و (اللمسة) و (وجهًا لوجه) وغيرها. كذلك يتحرك فيلليني وكوروساوا وبونويل في العوالم نفسها مثل تاركوفسكي. أما انطونيوني فكان في طريقه إلى ذلك لكنه انتهى وتعقد نتيجة ملله الذاتي. أما ميليس فكان حاضرًا هناك على الدوام، فهو ساحر بمهنته. الفيلم كالحلم، الفيلم كالموسيقى.. لا يوجد أي نوع من الفنون له قدرة الفيلم على النفاذ إلى ما وراء الإدراك العادي وملامسة العواطف في أعماق الروح. ارتعاش في عصب العين، أثر الصدمة: أربعة وعشرين لقطة مضاءة في الثانية يفصل بين كل واحدة منها خط أسود لا تستطيع العين التقاطه. عندما أمرر شريط الفيلم لقطة لقطة على طاولة المونتاج ينتابني إحساس السحر الذي كان يراودني في طفولتي، في عتمة خزانة الثياب وأنا أدير ببطء لقطة وراء لقطة، فأرصد كل التغيرات التي تحدث، وما أن أدبر الآلة بسرعة حتى أرى الحركة. ظلال الأشخاص الصامتين أو المتكلمين تتحرك دون مراوغة تجاه أكثر غرفي سرية، رائحة المعدن الساخن، الصور المرتعشة، خشخشة الصليب المالطي، ويدي التي تمسك بمقبض الباب.

Tror du inte jag förstår? Den hopplösa drömmen om att vara. Inte verka utan vara. I varje ögonblick medveten, vaksam. Och samtidigt avgrunden mellan vad du är inför andra och vad du är inför dig själv. Svindelkänslan och den ständiga hungern att äntligen få bli avslöjad. Att få bli genomskådad, reducerad, kanske till och med utplånad. Varje tonfall en lögn, varje gest en förfalskning, varje leende en grimas. Ta livet av sig? Nej då, det är för otäckt. Det gör man inte. Men man kan bli orörlig, man kan bli tyst. Då ljuger man åtminstone inte. Man kan stänga in sig, skärma av. Då behöver man inte spela några roller, visa några ansikten, göra några falska gester – tror man. Men ser du, verkligheten jävlas. Ditt gömställe, det är inte tillräckligt tätt. Överallt sipprar det in livsyttringar. Du tvingas reagera. Det är ingen som frågar efter om det är äkta eller oäkta, om du är sann eller förljugen. Det är bara på teatern som sådant är en fråga av vikt. Knappt där heller för den delen. Jag förstår dig, Elisabet. Jag förstår att du tiger, jag förstår att du är orörlig, att du har satt viljelösheten i ett fantastiskt system. Jag förstår och jag beundrar. Jag tycker att du ska hålla på med den rollen tills den är färdigspelad, tills den inte längre är intressant. Då kan du ju lämna den, precis som du undan för undan lämnar alla dina andra roller.

În ciuda faptului că port o mască,nu sunt nesincer.Intuiţia mea vorbeşte repede şi clar,sunt prezent în deplinătatea fiinţei mele.Masca este un filtru.Nimic din ceea ce este personal şi care nu are nici o importanţă,nu trebuie să treacă prin ea.Tumultul din mine trebuie ţinut în frâu.

Minus: Papa, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality burst open. Do you understand? David: I do. Minus: Reality burst open, and I tumbled out. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything. David: I know. Minus: I can't live in this new world. David: Yes, you can. But you must have something to hold on to. Minus: What would that be? A god? Give me proof of God. You can't. David: Yes, I can. But you have to listen carefully. Minus: Yes, I need to listen. David: I can only give you a hint of my own hope. It is to know that love exists as something real in the human world. Minus: A special kind of love, I suppose? David: All kinds, Minus. The highest and the lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime. All kinds of love. Minus: And the longing for love? David: Longing and denial. Trust and distrust. Minus: Then love is the proof? David: I don't know if love is proof of God's existence, or if love is God himself. Minus: To you, love and God are the same thing. David: That thought helps me in my emptiness and despair. Minus: Tell me more, Papa. David: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. It's like a reprieve, Minus, from a death sentence. Minus: Papa... If it is as you say, then Karin is surrounded by God, since we love her. David: Yes. Minus: Can that help her? David: I believe so. Minus: ... Papa, would you mind if I go for a run? David: Off you go. I'll make dinner. See you in an hour. Minus: ... Papa spoke to me.

My father had the rare ability to make others feel as though they were the one and only. That they were seen, heard, chosen. He would take you by the hand and say, Come with me, and for a brief or a long moment you might think you were the first person he has ever said this to. That it was you and him against the world.

Most of all I miss working with Sven Nykvist, perhaps because we are both utterly captivated by the problems of light, the gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, living, dead, clear, misty, hot, violent, bare, sudden, dark, spring like, falling, straight, slanting, sensual, subdued, limited, poisonous, calming, pale light. Light.

Alexander: Ingen jävel har en tanke i huvet. Oscar: Du måste vare rädd om mänskor, Alexander. Alexander: Idiotar. Nästsn allihop. Oscar: Så småningom kommer du att förstå - Alexander: Jag tror inte på det där snacket. “Så småningom kommer du att förstå.” Vilket förbannat så småningom? Jag ser klart. Mänskor är löjliga och jag tyckar illa om dem.

Alexander: Ingen jävel har en tanke i huvet. Oscar: Du måste vare rädd om mänskor, Alexander. Alexander: Idiotar. Nästan allihop. Oscar: Så småningom kommer du att förstå - Alexander: Jag tror inte på det där snacket. “Så småningom kommer du att förstå.” Vilket förbannat så småningom? Jag ser klart. Mänskor är löjliga och jag tyckar illa om dem.

Helena: Är du ledsen för at du har blivit gammal, Isak? Isak: Nej. Det verkar som om allting blir värre. Värre väder, värre mänskor, värre maskiner, värre krig. Gränserna sprängs och allt det outsägliga breder ut sig och kan aldrig mere hejdas. Då är det gott att vara död. Helena: Du er en ruskig gammal värdsfötaktare, Isak, det har du alltid varit. Jag tror inte alls som du. Isak: Nej, nej, gudskelov för det. Helena: Det hindrar inte att jag vill gråta. Tycker du det är otrevligt om jag gråter en liten stund. (Jon försökar gråta.) Nej, min själ det går inte. Det blir ingenting. Jag får lov att drikka litet mer konjak.

You complain that you cry out, and that God doesn't reply. You feel imprisoned and you're afraid that it is a life sentence... although no one has said anything. Consider then, that you are your own judge and your own gaoler. Prisoner, leave your prison! To your astonishment you will find that no one will stop you. The reality outside prison is indeed terrifying, but never as terrifying as your anguish down in that locked room. Take your first step towards freedom. It is not difficult. The second step is more difficult, but never allow yourself to be defeated by your gaolers who are only your own fear and your own pride.

¿Crees que no lo entiendo? El sueño imposible de ser. No de parecer, sino de ser. Consciente en cada momento. Vigilante. Al mismo tiempo, el abismo entre lo que eres para los otros y para ti misma, el sentimiento de vértigo y el deseo constante de, al menos, estar expuesta, de ser analizada, diseccionada, quizás incluso aniquilada. Cada palabra una mentira, cada gesto una falsedad, cada sonrisa una mueca. ¿Suicidarse? ¡Oh, no! ¡Eso es horrible! Tú no harías eso. Pero puedes quedarte inmóvil y en silencio. Por lo menos así no mientes. Puedes encerrarte en ti misma, aislarte. Así no tendrás que desempeñar roles, ni poner caras ni falsos gestos. Piensas. Pero, ¿ves? La realidad es atravesada, tu escondite no es hermético. La vida se cuela por todas partes. Estás obligada a reaccionar. Nadie pregunta si es real o irreal, si tú eres verdadera o falsa. La pregunta sólo importa en el teatro. Y casi ni siquiera allí. Te entiendo, Elisabeth. Entiendo que estés en silencio, que estés inmóvil, que hayas situado esta falta de voluntad en un sistema fantástico. Te entiendo y te admiro. Creo que deberías mantener este papel hasta que se agote, hasta que deje de ser interesante. Entonces podrás dejarlo. Igual que poco a poco fuiste dejando los demás papeles.

arrived in Cambridge, and made an appointment to meet the formidable Krister Stendahl, a Swedish scholar of fierce intelligence, now to be my first adviser. We met in his office. I was nervous, but also amused that this tall and severe man, wearing a black shirt and clerical collar, looked to me like an Ingmar Bergman version of God. After preliminary formalities, he abruptly swiveled in his chair and turned sternly to ask, “So really, why did you come here?” I stumbled over the question, then mumbled something about wanting to find the essence of Christianity. Stendahl stared down at me, silent, then asked, “How do you know it has an essence?” In that instant, I thought, That’s exactly why I came here: to be asked a question like that—challenged to rethink everything. Now I knew I had come to the right place. I’d chosen Harvard because it was a secular university, where I wouldn’t be bombarded with church dogma. Yet I still imagined that if we went back to first-century sources, we might hear what Jesus was saying to his followers when they walked by the Sea of Galilee—we might find the “real Christianity,” when the movement was in its golden age. But Harvard quenched these notions; there would be no simple path to what Krister Stendahl ironically called “play Bible land” simply by digging through history. Yet I also saw that this hope of finding “the real Christianity” had driven countless people—including our Harvard professors—to seek its origins. Naive as our questions were, they were driven by a spiritual quest. We discovered that even the earliest surviving texts had been written decades after Jesus’s death, and that none of them are neutral. They reveal explosive controversy between his followers, who loved him, and outsiders like the Roman senator Tacitus and the Roman court historian Suetonius, who likely despised him. Taken together, what the range of sources does show, contrary to those who imagine that Jesus didn’t exist, is that he did: fictional people don’t have real enemies. What came next was a huge surprise: our professors at Harvard had file cabinets filled with facsimiles of secret gospels I had never heard of—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Truth—and dozens of other writings, transcribed by hand from the original Greek into Coptic, and mimeographed in blue letters on pages stamped TOP SECRET. Discovered in 1945, these texts only recently had become available to scholars. This wasn’t what I’d expected to find in graduate school, or even what I wanted—at least, not so long as I still hoped to find answers instead of more questions

Nu citesc ziare,nu ascult şi nici nu mă uit la pogramele de ştiri.Încet şi pe neobservate dispare cel mai credincios tovarăş din viaţa mea:anxietatea,moştenită atât de la mama cât şi de la tata,aşezată chiar în centrul identităţii mele,demonul şi în aceelaşi timp prietenul şi stimulatorul meu.Mi se antenuează nu numai suferinţa,angoasa şi sentimentul de umilire ireparabilă,dar mi se eclipsează şi estompează şi forţa propulsivă a creativităţii. Aş fi putut rămâne un caz medical pentru tot restul vieţii mele.Existenţa îmi era aşa de plăcută în aceea stare de melancolie.Ea era ocrotită cu atâta delicateţe.Nimic nu mai este real,nimic nu mai are vreo importanţă,nimic nu mai este neliniştitor sau chinuitor.Mă mişc cu precauţie,reacţiile îmi sunt întârziate sau inexistente,sexualitatea încetează,viaţa este o elegie,un madrigal cântat de un cor,undeva departe,sub o boltă cu ecou,în timp ce ferestrele rotunde cu vitralii strălucesc şi spun poveşti care nu mă mai intereseză.

Şövalye: - Benzerlerime, insanlara ilgisizliğim, onların düzeninden ayırdı beni. Şimdi bir hayaletler dünyasında yaşıyorum. Düşlerim, kuruntularım içre kapatılmışım. Ölüm: - Yine de ölmek istemiyorsunuz. Şövalye: - Hayır istiyorum. Ölüm: - Ne bekliyorsunuz? Şövalye: - Bilgi istiyorum. Ölüm: - Dayanak mı istiyorsunuz? Şövalye: - Adına ne derseniz dein. Tanrıyı duyularla kavramak, öyle amansızcasına anlaşılmaz bir şey mi? Ne diye yarım sözler ve görünmeyen mucizeler sisinde saklıyor kendini? Kendimize inancımız yokken, inananlara nasıl inanabiliriz? İnanmak isteyip de inanamayanların başına neler gelecek? Peki, ne inanmak isteyen ne de inanmaya gücü yetenler ne olacak? Tanrıyı neden öldüremem içimde? Ona kötü sözler söylerim, yüreğimden söküp fırlatmak isterim de, neden böyle ağrılar içinde, böyle aşağılanarak yaşar durur? Neden, her şeye karşın , silkip atamadığım şaşırtıcı bir gerçektir o? İşitiyor musunuz beni? Ölüm: - Evet, işitiyorum. Şövalye: - Bilgi istiyorum, inanç değil, varsayımlar değil, bilgi. Tanrı elini bana doğru uzatsın, kendini açığa vurup benimle konuşsun istiyorum. Ölüm: - Ama sessiz durur o. Şövalye: - Karanlıkta ona doğru haykırıyorum, ama sanki hiç kimse yok orada. Ölüm: - Hiç kimse yok belki de. Şövalye: - Yaşamak iğrenç bir korku öyleyse. Kimse ölümün karşısında her şeyin bir hiç olduğunu bile bile yaşayamaz. Ölüm: - İnsanların çoğu ölüm ya da yaşamın boşluğu üzerine kafa yormaz ki. Şövalye: - Ama bir gün yaşantının o son anına varıp, karanlığa doğru bakmak zorunda kalacaklar. Ölüm: - O gün geldiğinde... Şövalye: - Korku içindeyken bir görüntü yaratırız, sonra o görüntüye Tanrı deriz.

I pictured myself sitting by the fire and knitting the Celtic mists and shadowy pools into my cloth. I pictured Jonathan getting up from his typewriter and going out to split wood like a man in Ingmar Bergman, and the child, with woollen mittens flapping at its cuffs, tottering after him.

Of filmmakers then active, Kubrick valued Ingmar Bergman above all—so much so that he wrote the Swedish director a fan letter in 1960, praising his “unearthly and brilliant contribution,” and stating, “Your vision of life has moved me deeply, more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films.

Helena (börjar gråta): Ser du, nu gråter jag. Det glada, fina livet är slut, det hemska, skitige livet kastar sig över oss. Så är det.