137 Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa.

History is not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.

A child doesn’t have to be a prodigy. The only thing that matters is that he should’t become ‘stuck’ in childishness.

We all either underestimate each other, or else exaggerate each other’s virtues. Very few people are capable of assessing others as they deserve. It is a particular gift. In fact I would even say that only the great are capable of it.

For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most extraordinary discoveries await us in the sphere of time. We know less about time than about anything else.

A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts – for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.

One doesn’t need a lot to be able to live. The great thing is to be free in your work. Ofcourse it’s important to print or exhibit, but if that’s not possible you are still left with the most important thing of all – being able to work without asking anybody’s permission.

I believe in one thing: the human spirit is immortal and indestructible. In the beyond there could be anything, it is of no importance whatsoever. What we call death is not death. It’s a rebirth. A caterpillar becomes a cocoon. I think there is a life after death and it is that that is unnerving. It would be so much simpler to conceive of oneself as a telephone cord that is unplugged. Then you could live any way that you wanted. God would have no importance of any kind.

I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something wrong with the way I live. Something false about everything I do. Even when I want to do something good; I feel that it’s only in order to seem a better person.