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An artist needs knowledge and the power of observation only so that he can tell from what he is abstaining, and to be sure that his abstention will not appear artificial or false.

Andrei Tarkovsky

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Andrei Tarkovsky
Age: 54 †
Born: 1932
Born: April 4
Died: 1986
Died: December 28
Actor
Biographer
Director
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Writer
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Andrej Tarkovskij
Andrei Tarkovski
Andrej Tarkovszkij
And. Arsenʹevich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrey Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Andreĭ Arsenʹevich Tarkovskĭi
Andrei Tarkovskij
Andreĭ Arsenévich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrey Tarkovsky
Andreĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrej Tarkowskij
Andreiĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrei Arsen'evich Tarko
Power
Artificial
Needs
Observation
Appear
False
Sure
Knowledge
Artist
Abstaining
Tell
Abstention

More quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

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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.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Modern mass culture, aimed at the consumer, the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art would be useless if the world were perfect.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people's ideas.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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The death of childhood is the beginning of poetry.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe, being linked with that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art is born out of an ill-designed world.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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ALL ART, OF COURSE, IS INTELLECTUAL, BUT FOR ME, ALL THE ARTS, AND CINEMA EVEN MORE SO, MUST ABOVE ALL BE EMOTIONAL AND ACT UPON THE HEART.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Of course life has no point. If it had, man would not be free.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him.
Andrei Tarkovsky