Bergman Quotes

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, "I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there's something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it's not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It's not like I sit here philosophizing, because I've no talent for that. It's just this thing about silence that's so wonderful. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen. ~ Julie Delpy

It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, genetaring and degenerating itself. ~ Ingmar Bergman

A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone."
A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone."
-Maddie ~ Jill Shalvis

Reality is perhaps not at all what I imagine. Perhaps it doesn't exist, in fact. Perhaps it only exists as a longing. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart. ~ Ingrid Bergman

WTFact: The human small intestine can reach up to eight meters in length. Why do you want to know that? Because all knowledge is important, f*ck-face. ~ Gregory Bergman

Excellent."
As soon as Bergman left earshot Vayl said, "I am going to buy you some pom-poms and a short pleated skirt-"
Hey, if Bergman needs a cheerleard, that's what he's getting."
Vayl tipped his head to one side and smiled wickedly. "I was just thinking perhaps I need a cheerleader as well."
Cassandra got up. "If that's where this conversation is headed, I'm leaving."
She wants some pom-poms too," I told Vayl.
I do not! ~ Jennifer Rardin

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

Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized - if he went to watch a theater show, 'Ah! He is here tonight.' ~ Max Von Sydow

There's nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Happiness is good health and a bad memory. ~ Ingrid Bergman

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. ~ Wes Craven

I always felt guilty. My whole life. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Death: When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends.
Antonius Block: And will you reveal your secrets?
Death: I have no secrets.
Antonius Block: So do you know nothing?
Death: I am unknowing. ~ 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

Jöns: But feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive! ~ Ingmar Bergman

I know that I shall have lost to the jungle if I take a weak moral standpoint or relax my mental punctiliousness. I have therefore come to a certain belief which is based on three powerful effective commandments: THOU SHALT BE ENTERTAINING AT ALL TIMES. THOU SHALT OBEY THY ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE AT ALL TIMES. THOU SHALT MAKE EACH FILM AS IF IT WERE THY LAST. ~ Ingmar Bergman

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

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don't like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Bergman has a very special eye for people. His background taught him to listen and to feel. ~ Max Von Sydow

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... ~ Ingmar Bergman

Minus: Papa, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality burst open. Do you understand?

David: I do.

Minus: Reality burst open, and I tumbled out. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything.

David: I know.

Minus: I can't live in this new world.

David: Yes, you can. But you must have something to hold on to.

Minus: What would that be? A god? Give me proof of God. You can't.

David: Yes, I can. But you have to listen carefully.

Minus: Yes, I need to listen.

David: I can only give you a hint of my own hope. It is to know that love exists as something real in the human world.

Minus: A special kind of love, I suppose?

David: All kinds, Minus. The highest and the lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime. All kinds of love.

Minus: And the longing for love?

David: Longing and denial. Trust and distrust.

Minus: Then love is the proof?

David: I don't know if love is proof of God's existence, or if love is God himself.

Minus: To you, love and God are the same thing.

David: That thought helps me in my emptiness and despair.

Minus: Tell me more, Papa.

David: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. It's like a reprieve, Minus, from a death sentence.

Minus: Papa... If it is as you say, then Karin is surrounded by God, since ~ Ingmar Bergman

If you'll let me, I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. ~ Lindsay 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

Sara: As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't know.
Sara: You know so much, and you don't know anything. ~ Ingmar Bergman

In Paris, when the picture came out [Casablanca] they weren't too pleased with it. They didn't like the political point of view. The picture was taken off immediately and was never sold to television. A while ago it was brought in and opened in five theatres in Paris, as a new movie. They had a big gala opening where I appeared and people were absolutely crazy about it. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get. ~ Ingrid Bergman

You can't expect that because you find a story and report it out that your newspaper and broadcasting company is going to want to publish and broadcast it - and you're going to be a hero. ~ Lowell Bergman

I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman, What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director ... I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value. ~ Paul Schrader

I think I am a better ghost than I am a human being. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Worrying about parents is a waste of time. It's your life. Let's have a martini. ~ Megan Mayhew 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

Man has made himself free, terribly and dizzyingly free. Religion and art are kept alive for the sake of sentimentality, as a conventional politeness toward the past, a benevolent solicitude of leisure's increasingly nervous citizens. ~ Ingmar Bergman

There is no time like the pleasant. ~ George Bergman

I always work with 18 friends. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I remember thinking that moms were not allowed to be sad, that surely women grew out of sadness by the time they had children. ~ Megan Mayhew Bergman

Just give the Italians a chance for drama and they take it with both hands. ~ Ingrid Bergman

On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley ... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it. ~ Roger Ebert

When people speak admiringly of a butch, what I see is someone who has taken on the best gendered characteristics of both woman and man, left a lot of the stuff born of misogyny and heterosexism behind, and walked forward into the world without apology. ~ S. Bear Bergman

I hate Sunday, I can't wait for Monday so I can go back to work again. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Mr. Bergman was a man of great working discipline. He forced everyone to concentrate when it was important. No disturbing noise during rehearsal. A code of silence. ~ Max Von Sydow

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

Many countries in the world do not allow GMO crops because of the known health risks and the unknown consequences when it comes to human consumption. ~ John 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

Limits aren't there to tell us "you can't." Limits are there to tell us "you shouldn't. ~ Katie Bergman

I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call. ~ Ingmar Bergman

And yet there are many times when it does not make any difference what pattern one uses. One thing is certain. The more bedraggled the fly gets the better the trout like it. I think there is a reason for this. I think the bedraggled half worn out wet fly more closely imitates a nymph than a new one does. Most commercial flies are tied too bushy and full. A little trimming of wings and thinning out of hackles will often work wonders. ~ Ray Bergman

When my daughter, Clare, was 4, she told me that a school friend had told her what I did for a living. Clare asked me, 'Is it true you play Jack Rabbit?' ~ Peter Bergman

Passing is one of the few words in the transgender lexicon that's not a medical-legacy word. We did ever so much better with this one: it's a racist-legacy word, a legacy of the time when Africans were kidnapped from their homeland to be enslaved in the Americas. If you're not familiar with this, a hierarchy of race developed in which the lighter your skin was, the more attractive and intelligent you were considered, and someone quite light-skinned could sometimes pass for white and live in white society. ~ S. Bear Bergman

Death: Do you never stop questioning?
Antonius Block: No. I never stop. ~ Ingmar Bergman

The older I become, the more I think about my mother. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I know what I am. I know that I've chosen to identify as a transgender woman, and that I am - by and large - happy with where I am in this world. I'm far from perfect, and I could give you a list as long as my arms of the things I'd love to change. Nevertheless, I am still here, and I am still me, and no one can change that without my permission.
-Gwendolyn Ann Smith, We're All Someone's Freak ~ Kate Bornstein S. Bear Bergman

I have a horror of tags and labels. I don't understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman's "symbolism". Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

I have thus decided to make a certain film and now begins the complicated and difficult-to-master work. To transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones and scents into words and sentences in a readable or at least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible. ~ Ingmar Bergman

When one never speaks, one has nothing to say because one has too much to say. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Mexican cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio Fernandez were students of both Sergei Eisenstein and Toland. Their exteriors and lighting were gorgeous. And the films Ingmar Bergman did with Sven Nykvist were exceptional. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

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 vengeful hag is played by Ingrid Bergman, which is like casting Eleanor Roosevelt as Lizzie Borden. ~ Kenneth Tynan

My basic view of things is - not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I said, "I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion." And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, "Ingrid, fake it!" Well, that was the best advice I've had in my whole life, because in all the years to come there were many directors who gave me what I thought were quite impossible instructions and many difficult things to do, and just when I was on the verge of starting to argue with them, I heard his voice coming to me through the air saying, "Ingrid, fake it!" It saved a lot of unpleasant situations and waste of time. ~ Ingrid Bergman

Bergman made countless masterpieces, but for one reason or another, 'Winter Light' stays closest to my heart. ~ Jake Paltrow

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

As she began to speak she stood and started to wrap herself, expertly, creating a binding in minutes that held without a wrinkle until the show ended. Peggy made a connection between binding her breasts and wrapping her hands in boxing wraps; this was what one did before battle, to protect one's self (and it is the Self, absolutely, that binding protects for many butches). ~ S. Bear Bergman

There are more locations than girl and boy, man and woman. Decamping from one does not have to mean climbing into another. There's plenty of space in between, or beyond the bounds, or all along and across the plane or sphere or whatever of gender, and it is entirely okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, and so I shall be a boy." But it must also be okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, so I shall set about changing what it means to be a girl," and, yes, okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, and so I shan't. ~ S. Bear Bergman

As far as I can ascertain the reasons for missing a rising fish come from faulty reactions. When we miss a fish we are either too fast or too slow ~ Ray Bergman

I have always admired him (Bergman), and I wish I could be an equally good filmmaker as he is, but it will never happen. His love for the cinema almost gives me a guilty conscience ~ Steven Spielberg

A movie that I've seen probably the most is 'Fanny & Alexander,' the Ingmar Bergman movie. I even dragged my friends to the super long version that had an intermission. I don't know how much they liked me that day. ~ Gillian Jacobs

I do like large entrances, but this was a little too large. ~ Peter Bergman

And at the risk of answering the same question the same way over and over: it's not a fucking binary. It would be easier for a lot of people if it were, but it just bloody well ain't, and nothing any of us does can make it that way. Please take a deep breath. Or, ~ S. Bear Bergman

I'm only interested in two kinds of people, those who can entertain me and those who can advance my career. ~ Ingrid Bergman

I've never felt Truth was Beauty. Never. I've always felt that people can't take too much reality. I like being in Ingmar Bergman's world. Or in Louis Armstrong's world. Or in the world of the New York Knicks. Because it's not this world. You spend your whole life searching for a way out. You just get an overdose of reality, you know, and it's a terrible thing. I'm always fighting against reality. ~ Woody Allen

You know I feel such tenderness for you. It's difficult to bear. I don't know what to do with my tenderness. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I don't want him to know that people like Louis's mom exist, that people fall into land mines of pain and can't crawl back out. ~ Megan Mayhew Bergman

Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit, the echo alone reaching me, striking without warning, a child weeping uninhibitedly, imprisoned forever. ~ Ingmar Bergman

We're too busy busting whorehouses or solving murders. That's what makes the show so funny ~ Jaime Bergman

You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home. ~ Paul Auster

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

My wife wonders why all women do not seek anglers for husbands. She has come in contact with many in her life with me and she claims that they all have a sweetness in their nature which others lack. ~ Ray Bergman

I'm just saying: I have never really felt like a girl is not the same as I have always felt like a boy. I mention this because when I have these tortuous inner conversations about how I may yet need to change my body and whether (and in what way) I am prepared to invest myself in the destination model of transition, I have to keep reminding myself of this important thing. ~ S. Bear Bergman

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

It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes. ~ Megan Mayhew 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

Well, we're grasping for two things at once. Partly for communion with others - that's the deepest instinct in us. And partly, we're seeking security. By constant communion with others we hope we shall be able to accept the horrible fact of our total solitude. ~ Ingmar Bergman

[in the context of 1881] "Don't you want to get married and have babies? Mrs. Bergman used to say that women need-" "What women need is more exercise, shorter skirts, and their own way once in a while. ~ Karen Cushman

Sometimes I get a little tired of it. But you know, what a privilege, to get tired of working with Ingmar Bergman. ~ Liv Ullmann

I am forever living in my childhood. ~ Ingmar Bergman

So please, for the love of gender- go bloom. Or water someone else while they do. ~ S. Bear Bergman

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain. ~ Terry Gilliam

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

I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have. ~ Ingmar Bergman

When you finish a film, you never want to see it again. ~ 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

I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible ~ Gregory Corso

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

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

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

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying. ~ Ingmar Bergman