Quotes from Robert Bresson

Bâtis ton film sur du blanc, sur le silence et l'immobilité.

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 onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

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

Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.

The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way. Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

Be the first to see what you see as you see it.

Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration.

Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.

Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create

Practice the precept: find without seeking

be sure of having used to the full all that is communicated by immobility and silence.

The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me and, above all, what they do not suspect is in them.

Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.

Hostility to art is also hostility to the new, to the unforeseen.

Unbalance so as to re-balance.

It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.

Provoke the unexpected. Expect it.

Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art's form.

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing

Create expectations to fulfil them.

The greater the success, the closer it verges on failure.

Empty the pond to get the fish.