Andrei Tarkovsky Short Quotes

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Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.

Andrei Tarkovsky
A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.

Andrei Tarkovsky
Joy is lack of understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Andrei Tarkovsky
I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.

Andrei Tarkovsky
An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.

Andrei Tarkovsky
We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency.

Andrei Tarkovsky
I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.

Andrei Tarkovsky
Objectivity can only be the author's and therefore subjective, even if he is editing a newsreel.

Andrei Tarkovsky
For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.

Andrei Tarkovsky
A person fulfils his duty to society in the name of an idea, always doing violence to someone or something.

Andrei Tarkovsky
It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

Andrei Tarkovsky
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
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
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
The film 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
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
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
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
"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
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
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
Of course life has no point. If it had man would not be free, he'd become a slave to that point and his life would be governed by completely new criteria: the criteria of slavery.

Andrei Tarkovsky
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
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