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

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.

Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual...

What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.

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

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

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