“I’m very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“If I don’t create, I don’t exist.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“For me, the human face is the most important subject of the cinema.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“There is something joyous about not talking.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I am very shy with people I don’t know.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there’s plenty of anger left.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I was booed at the premiere of ‘Miss Julie,’ a remarkably stimulating experience.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I hope I never get so old I get religious.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t thought about death.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I usually say I left puberty at 58.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Mother was actually a great doer and organizer. All the special occasions were directed by mother.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“We always regret that we did not ask our parents more, really get to know them while they were alive.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I was bloody ill-tempered when I was young.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I always work with 18 friends.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I hate to travel. I don’t go anywhere.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I haven’t put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“When I’m on Faro, I’m never lonely.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I don’t watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry… and miserable. I think it’s awful.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I make all my decisions on intuition.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I dream about doing a film about once a week.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“From an early age onward, it was said that ‘Ingmar has no sense of humor.’”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I am forever living in my childhood.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“When you’re as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.’”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I have such difficulty calming down – my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“There are so many books I want to read. Difficult books. That’s what I intend to do and what I’m longing for.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Sometimes, I probably do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“In ‘The Serpent’s Egg,’ I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“If I let myself go, nothing will get done.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“My education was very tough.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“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.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“There hasn’t been anyone with whom I can discuss my scripts. Even when the film is done, there is no one I can show it to who gives his sincere opinion. There is silence.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work – he is in touch with the child. He is not rational; he is impulsive and extremely emotional.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“I was very much in love with my mother. She was a very warm and a very cold woman. When she was warm, I tried to come close to her. But she could be very cold and rejecting.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying. But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“If I didn’t have my profession, I think I would be sitting in a nuthouse. But I have been unceasingly at work, and this has been very healthy for me. So I had no need for therapy.”
― Ingmar Bergman
“When you finish a film, you never want to see it again.”
― Ingmar Bergman
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