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.

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.

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.

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.

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

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.

Knowledge is truthful only if it’s based in morality.