A masterpiece only comes into being when the artist is totally sincere in his treatment of his material…An artist can not be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty. Art is the absolute form of the beautiful, of the perfected.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
A masterpiece is a space closed in upon itself, not subject to either cooling or over-heating. Beauty is in the balance of the parts.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
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
I am convinced that for any one of us our filmmaking will turn out to be a fruitless and hopeless affair if we fail to grasp precisely and unequivocally the specific character of cinema, and if we fail to find in ourselves our own key to it.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
One doesn’t need to explain in film, but rather to directly affect the feelings of the audience. It is this awakened emotion that then drives the thoughts forward.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
We’ve reached a time when we must declare open warfare on mediocrity, grayness, and lack of expressiveness, and make creative inquiry a rule in cinema.
- Andrei Tarkovsky
I believe only poets will remain in the history of cinema. I think there exists a law: auteur cinema is made of poets, and all great directors are poets. And what is a poet in cinema? He is a director who creates his own world without reproducing the reality around him. That is what we call “auteur cinema.”
- Andrei Tarkovsky
In cinema, it is necessary not to explain, but to act upon the viewer’s feelings, and the emotion which is awoken provokes thought.
- Andrei Tarkovsky