Robert Bresson

“You bore me”

“Let nothing be changed and all be different.”

“Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.”

“Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.”

“The crude real will not by itself yield truth.”

“Create expectations to fulfil them.”

“Provoke the unexpected. Expect it.”

“Empty the pond to get the fish.”

“It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.”

“Be the first to see what you see as you see it.”

“Unbalance so as to re-balance.”

“The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me and, above all, what they do not suspect is in them.”

“The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.”

“Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create”

“Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds.”

“Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”

“Practice the precept: find without seeking”

“Hostility to art is also hostility to the new, to the unforeseen.”

“When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration.”

“The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.”

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”