Krzysztof Kieslowski
I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know.Collection: Chance
I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole.Collection: Future
Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?Collection: Equality
Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.
For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you.
Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.
There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.
Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.
It's not interesting to achieve; the ways of achievement are interesting.
I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.
To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work.
I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably because I'd tried three times.
I am trained as a film-maker. There is nothing else I can do.
It's with pleasure that I'm putting film-making aside. I never enjoyed making films. I didn't like the whole film world - an invented, unreal world whose values are completely different to those I'm used to.
In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.
I have no problem being with people of different nationalities.
Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult.
The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.
In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.
We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love.
If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying.
Documentaries deal with people who live real, everyday lives. But if these people trusted us and told us the truth about their lives, it could be used against them - which sometimes happened.
I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element.
Things have changed for the worse. That's why former eastern bloc countries are electing communists again. We are missing them and longing for the times we cursed before.
I can't imagine life without Poland. I find it very hard to find a place for myself in the West.
You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect...The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film... I've been trying to get there from the beginning. I'm somebody who doesn't know, somebody who's searching.Collection: Movie
Real artists find answers. The knowledge of the artisan is within the confines of his skills. For example, I know a lot about lenses, about the editing room. I know what the different buttons on the camera are for. I know more or less how to use a microphone. I know all that, but that's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is knowing how to live, why we live, things like that.Collection: Real
Interior liberty is universal.Collection: Liberty
We all steal, but if we're smart we steal from great directors. Then, we can call it influence.Collection: Smart
This man (Bergman) is one of the few film directors-perhaps the only one in the world-to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus.Collection: Men
I like chance meetings--life is full of them. Everyday, without realizing it, I pass people whom I should know. At this moment, in this cafe, we're sitting next to strangers. Everyone will get up, leave, and go on their own way. And they'll never meet again. And if they do, they won't realize that it's not for the first time.Collection: People
You have to want to make a film for other reasons - to say something, to tell a story, to show somebody's fate - but you can't want to make a film simply for the sake of it.Collection: Fate
The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film.Collection: Dream
That's the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film.Collection: Directors
Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made.Collection: Mistake
We understand the concept of equality, that we all want to be equal. But I think this is absolutely not true. I don't think anybody really wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal.Collection: Thinking
(When asked what a director does) I help.Collection: Directors
In ten phrases, the ten commandments express the essential of life. And these three words--liberty, equality, and fraternity--do just as much. Millions of people have died for those ideals.Collection: People
I feel Polish. More specifically, I feel like I'm from the tiny village in the Northeast of Poland where I have a house and where I love to spend time. But I don't work there. I cut wood.Collection: Cutting
For 6,000 years, these rules have been unquestionably right. And yet we break them every day. People feel that something is wrong in life. There is some kind of atmosphere that makes people now turn to other values. They want to contemplate the basic questions of life, and that is probably the real reason for wanting to tell these stories.Collection: Real
I wanted to describe the world at the same time, through image, express what I felt. It was the time of the great documentary filmmakers: Richard Leacock, Joris Ivens. Today, television has put an end to this type of filmmaking.Collection: Television
The relationship between the films and the individual Commandments [is] a tentative one. The films should be influenced by the individual Commandments to the same degree that the Commandments influence our daily lives.Collection: Degrees