This man (Bergman) is one of the few film directors-perhaps the only one in the world-to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus.

For 6,000 years, these rules have been unquestionably right. And yet we break them every day. People feel that something is wrong in life. There is some kind of atmosphere that makes people now turn to other values. They want to contemplate the basic questions of life, and that is probably the real reason for wanting to tell these stories.

In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words--liberty, equality, and fraternity--do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

Real artists find answers. The knowledge of the artisan is within the confines of his skills. For example, I know a lot about lenses, about the editing room. I know what the different buttons on the camera are for. I know more or less how to use a microphone. I know all that, but that's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowing how to live, why we live, things like that.

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.

You have to want to make a film for other reasons - to say something, to tell a story, to show somebody's fate - but you can't want to make a film simply for the sake of it.