Andrei Tarkovsky Quotes

In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection.

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.

The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him.

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

In the case of someone who is spiritual receptive, it is possible to talk of an analogy between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely religious experience. Arts acts above all on the soul shaping its spiritual structure.

Allí donde alguien se orienta deliberadamente por el público, estamos ante un producto de la industria del entretenimiento, ante shows y espectáculos de masas, nunca ante el arte, que indefectiblemente tiene que seguir sus leyes internas, inmanentes, con independencia de que sean aceptadas o no encuentren acogida

Hay que dejar totalmente claro que las normas ordinarias del cine comercial y las producciones televisivas al uso corrompen al público de forma imperdonable, porque le roban cualquier posibilidad de contacto con el arte verdadero

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.