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

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

The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. Of course an artist can lose his way, but even his mistakes are interesting provided they are sincere. For they represent the reality of his inner life, of the peregrinations and struggle into which the external world has thrown him.

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

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.

If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... 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.

An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.