The Best Ingmar Bergman quotes

When you finish a film, you never want to see it again. — Ingmar Bergman

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

I dream about doing a film about once a week. — Ingmar Bergman

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure–the costly, exacting mistress. — Ingmar Bergman

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe. — 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

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 know, of course, that by using film we can bring in other previously unknown worlds, realities beyond reality. — 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. — Ingmar Bergman

There is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. — 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

Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream. — 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

A film causes me so many worries and such a lot of reactions that I have to love it in order to get over it and past it. — Ingmar Bergman

When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. — Ingmar Bergman

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — 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

We’re thankful for the horrors we are used to. The unknown ones are worst — Ingmar Bergman

I think I have made just one picture that I really like. — Ingmar Bergman

In ‘The Serpent’s Egg,’ I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I. — Ingmar Bergman

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

I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality. — Ingmar Bergman

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

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

I think I’m Swedish because I like to live here on this island. You can’t imagine the loneliness and isolation in this country. In that way, I’m very Swedish–I don’t dislike to be alone. — Ingmar Bergman

I have a lot of tics and phobias. I hate to travel. I hate to go to festivals. I hate it when somebody gets close behind me. I’m scared of the darkness. I hate open doors. — 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

Faith is a torment, did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call. — Ingmar Bergman

All of us collect fortunes when we are children. A fortune of colors, of lights, and darkness, of movement, of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to his fortune when grown up. — Ingmar Bergman

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

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

When you die, you are extinguished. From being you will be transformed to non–being. A god does not necessarily dwell among our capricious atoms. — Ingmar Bergman

I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me. — Ingmar Bergman

If I let myself go, nothing will get done. — Ingmar Bergman

I always work with 18 friends. — Ingmar Bergman

I was a very unpleasant young man. If I met the young Ingmar today I’d say, ‘You’re very talented and I’ll try to help you, but I don’t want anything else to do with you. — Ingmar Bergman

When I’m on Faro, I’m never lonely. — Ingmar Bergman

I’m very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing. — Ingmar Bergman

The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. — Ingmar Bergman

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

Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t thought about death. — Ingmar Bergman

From an early age onward, it was said that ‘Ingmar has no sense of humor.’ — Ingmar Bergman

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

One must learn to live, I practice every day. — Ingmar Bergman

I feel very strongly that I’m surrounded by other realities. — Ingmar Bergman

To feel. To trust the feeling. I long for that — Ingmar Bergman

This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously? — Ingmar Bergman

I usually say I left puberty at 58. — Ingmar Bergman

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

Today we say all art is political. But I’d say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It’s a matter of attitudes. — Ingmar Bergman

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

I hate to travel. I don’t go anywhere. — Ingmar Bergman

I am forever living in my childhood. — Ingmar Bergman

Our social relationships are limited, most of the time, to gossip and criticizing people’s behavior. This observation slowly pushed me to isolate from the so–called social life. My days pass by in solitude. — Ingmar Bergman

I was booed at the premiere of ‘Miss Julie,’ a remarkably stimulating experience. — Ingmar Bergman

When you’re as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life. — Ingmar Bergman