We shouldn't talk about God, but about the holiness within man, and that through the musicians, the prophets and saints we've been enlightened about other worlds. Particulary through music, of course. We ask: "Where does music come from?" I've asked so many musicians... famous musicians and less famous, why we have music, where it comes from, and the strange thing is, they've never had a proper answer why we have musi, where it comes from.


I want calm, order and friendliness. Only in that way can we approach a limitless world. Only in that way can we solve the mysteries and learn the mechanisms of repetition. Repetition, living throbbing repetition. The same performance every night, the same performance and yet reborn. For that matter, how do we grasp the lightning-swift rubato so necessary for a performance not to become deadly routine or insufferable wilfulness? All good actors know the secret, the mediocre have to learn it, and the bad never learn.


The most important task of an actor is of course to focus on and respond to his fellow player. With no you, no I, as a wise person once put it.


The world is quaking and collapsing, we buzz officiously and rather excitedly inside the thick walls of the House. A little world of troubled disorder, industry, love and skill. This is all we know.


Only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise.


There are moving pictures with sound and light which never leave the projector of the soul but run in loops throughout life with unchanging sharpness, unchanging objective clarity. Only one's own insight inexorably and relentlessly moves inwards towards the truth.

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There’s no dividing line—no insurmountable wall. I know it can’t be described. It’s a world of liberated feelings. Do you know what I mean?
To me, man is a tremendous creation—an inconceivable thought. In man is everything, from the highest to lowest. Man is God’s image, and in God there is everything. So human beings are created, but also the demons and the saints, the prophets and artists and iconoclasts. Everything exists side by side. It’s like huge patterns changing all the time. In the same way, there must also be countless realities, not only the reality we perceive with our dull senses, but a tumult of realities arching above each other inside and outside. It’s just fear and priggishness to believe in limits. There are no limits, neither to thoughts nor feelings. It’s anxiety that sets limits.

-- from Autumn Sonata


I mean that the kind of film we are embarking on offers dangerous possibilities of artistic idea-diarrhea. To decide at every moment what is right and true and proper can be rather tricky. And the effort must not be noticeable either. Everything must give an impression of being natural--and yet be possible for us to create with our limited material resources.