Respondek Krzysztof Quotes

[on Rouge] This is a film about communication that disappears. We have better and better tools and less and less communication with each other. We only exchange information. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Real artists find answers. The knowledge of the artisan is within the confines of his skills. For example, I know a lot about lenses, about the editing room. I know what the different buttons on the camera are for. I know more or less how to use a microphone. I know all that, but that's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowing how to live, why we live, things like that. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words
liberty, equality, and fraternity
do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Why did they devise censorship? To show a world which doesn't exist, an ideal world, or what they envisaged as the ideal world. And we wanted to depict the world as it was. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I'm not someone who remembers dreams for long. I forget them as soon as I wake up- if I've had any, that is. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I'm not really sure who I am but I love reading books. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Do you think Western Civilization has come to an end?
"We are clearly going through a cultural crisis at the moment. It's a phase where we are trying to distinguish values of life. People are looking for a solution and perhaps they will find it. But the radicality of the search will change their view of life."
So there is a cultural crises?
"There is a general crisis, but it's not the end of the world.
But the crisis it total?
"And so what? The crisis means that now the world is at the bottom of a sinus curve. In the nature of things, it will now rise and fall again later. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

A good journalist must be neutral," were the first word she heard from her professor at Georgetown.
"No journalist is, nor will be, nor really should be neutral," were the first word spoken to her by editor-in-chief of the Des Moines Registrant. "We're all biased one way or the other and that's fine. It's like in the court of law, two points of view clashing so the truth can emerge. Being objective is not the same as being neutral. ~ Krzysztof Pacyński

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Listening to classical music is like reading philosophy books, not everybody has to do it. Music is not for everybody. ~ Krzysztof Penderecki

Finding a homeland is not the same as dwelling in the place where our ancestors once used to live. - KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI ~ Tony Judt

I feel Polish. More specifically, I feel like I'm from the tiny village in the Northeast of Poland where I have a house and where I love to spend time. But I don't work there. I cut wood. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

We understand the concept of equality, that we all want to be equal. But I think this is absolutely not true. I don't think anybody really wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

It's an obsession of mine, that different people, in different places, are thinking the same thing, but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking? ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Regardless of the subject of my films ... I am looking for a way of evoking in audiences feelings similar to my own: the physically painful impotence and sorrow that assail me when I see a man weeping at the bus stop, when I observe people struggling vainly to get close to others, when I see someone eating up the left-overs in a cheap restaurant, when I see the first blotches on a woman's hand and know that she too is bitterly aware of them, when I see the kind of appalling and irreparable injustice that so visibly scars the human face. I want this pain to come across to my audience, to see this physical agony, which I think I am beginning to fathom, to seep into my work. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

This, among other things, is where the magic of the screen lies: that suddenly, as an audience, you find yourself in a state of tension because you're in a world shown to you by the director. That world is so coherent, so comprehensive, so succinct that you're transported into it and experience tension because you sense the tension between the characters. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

(When asked what a director does) I help. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Documentaries deal with people who live real, everyday lives. But if these people trusted us and told us the truth about their lives, it could be used against them - which sometimes happened. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

For 6,000 years, these rules have been unquestionably right. And yet we break them every day. People feel that something is wrong in life. There is some kind of atmosphere that makes people now turn to other values. They want to contemplate the basic questions of life, and that is probably the real reason for wanting to tell these stories. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski