Quotes from 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.

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 usually say I left puberty at 58.

I am forever living in my childhood.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

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

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.