Ingmar Bergman

I am very shy with people I don't know.

From an early age onward, it was said that 'Ingmar has no sense of humor.'

The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left.

I have always appreciated the honest brutality of the international film world. One need never doubt one's worth in the market. Mine was zero.

I am extremely suspicious of dreams, apparitions and visions, both in literature and in films and plays. Perhaps it's because mental excesses of this sort smack too much of being 'arranged.'

For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.

I always work with 18 friends.

If I let myself go, nothing will get done.

There are so many books I want to read. Difficult books. That's what I intend to do and what I'm longing for.

The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.

I usually say I left puberty at 58.

We always regret that we did not ask our parents more, really get to know them while they were alive.

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

When we came out from the Elysee palace, there was a gigantic limousine waiting for us and four police on motorcycles. It is probably one of the few times I have experienced my fame. I thought it was so fantastic that I laughed to the point of shouting.

My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.

I think that for some time now I have been living with an anxiety which has had no tangible cause. It has been like having a toothache, without the conscientious dentist having been able to find anything wrong with the tooth or with the person as a whole.

My education was very tough.

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

I am forever living in my childhood.

We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.

Sometimes, I probably do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.

The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second.

I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.

The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy.

People ask what are my intentions with my films - my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct.

I was booed at the premiere of 'Miss Julie,' a remarkably stimulating experience.

Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father.

Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.

I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

We didn't know that Mother had gone through a passionate love affair or that Father suffered from severe depression. Mother was preparing to break out of her marriage, Father threatening to take his own life.

I have a feeling of complete balance. The sea, the house, the loneliness, the light. Everything is clearer. Much more precise. I have the feeling that I am living on a limit, and I'm crossing that limit sometimes.

I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have.

Mother was actually a great doer and organizer. All the special occasions were directed by mother.

I dream about doing a film about once a week.

I make all my decisions on intuition.

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life.

The only thing I consider appalling would be to suddenly become a vegetable and a burden on other people. A soul slowly dying out, trapped in a body in which the insides gradually sabotage me - that, I think, would be terrifying.

When you're as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life.

I hate to travel. I don't go anywhere.

Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death.

The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times, and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage.

If I don't create, I don't exist.

I was bloody ill-tempered when I was young.

I had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience about something so gravely serious as leaving your children is an affectation, a way of achieving a little suffering that can't for a moment be equal to the suffering you've caused.

Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.

In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

When I'm on Faro, I'm never lonely.

Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa.

Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons.

I have such difficulty calming down - my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro.