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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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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
Merely
Directors
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Artist
Perfectly
Ideas
Professional
People
Director

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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It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual...
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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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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A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?
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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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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A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.
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
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THE ARTISTIC IMAGE IS ALWAYS A METONYM, WHERE ONE THING IS SUBSTITUTED FOR ANOTHER, THE SMALLER FOR THE GREATER. TO TELL OF WHAT IS LIVING, THE ARTIST USES SOMETHING DEAD TO SPEAK OF THE INFINITE, HE SHOWS THE FINITE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.
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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I'VE NOTICED, FROM MY EXPERIENCE, IF THE EXTERNAL, EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF IMAGES IN A FILM ARE BASED ON THE FILMMAKER'S OWN MEMORY, ON THE KINSHIP OF ONE'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE FABRIC OF THE FILM, THEN THE FILM WILL HAVE THE POWER TO AFFECT THOSE WHO SEE IT.
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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No 'mise en scène' has the right to be repeated, just as no two personalities are ever the same. As soon as a 'mise en scène' turns into a sign, a cliché, a concept however original it may be, then the whole thing - characters, situation, psychology - become schematic and false.
Andrei Tarkovsky