When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the 'dirt' of the world. On the contrary! the artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.
Andrei TarkovskyMy purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness.
Andrei TarkovskyMy 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 TarkovskyBecoming 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 TarkovskyIf 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.
Andrei Tarkovsky