Quotes from Robert Bresson

The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

To create is not to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.

What is beautiful in a film, what I look for, in essence, is a journey toward the unknown. The audience has to sense that I'm heading toward the unknown, that I don't know in advance what will happen.

A film is not a story told with pictures, it's a succession of experiences.

Build your film on white, on silence and on stillness.

A film is born in my head. I try to make it, but I never succeed. What I want to do is impossible. It's beyond my capacity.

It's marvelous to discover someone little by little as you move through a film, instead of knowing in advance what that person will be.

In the nude, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

Ideas gathered from reading will always be bookish ideas. Go to the persons and objects directly. Have a painter's eye.

In cinema, words are a virus.

Authentic expression is something you can't invent. When you capture it, it's worthy of admiration.

The greatest films are those that never end.

Cinema, like music, should wash away the dust of everyday life.

The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.

Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.

Rendre visible ce qui, sans vous, pourrait peut-être jamais été vu

L'oeil superficiel, l'oreille profonde et inventive. Le sifflement d'une locomotive imprime en nous la vision de toute une gare.