Kieslowski Quotes & Sayings

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I'm not someone who remembers dreams for long. I forget them as soon as I wake up- if I've had any, that is. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Regardless of the subject of my films ... I am looking for a way of evoking in audiences feelings similar to my own: the physically painful impotence and sorrow that assail me when I see a man weeping at the bus stop, when I observe people struggling vainly to get close to others, when I see someone eating up the left-overs in a cheap restaurant, when I see the first blotches on a woman's hand and know that she too is bitterly aware of them, when I see the kind of appalling and irreparable injustice that so visibly scars the human face. I want this pain to come across to my audience, to see this physical agony, which I think I am beginning to fathom, to seep into my work. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Interior liberty is universal. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

[on Rouge] This is a film about communication that disappears. We have better and better tools and less and less communication with each other. We only exchange information. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

We all steal, but if we're smart we steal from great directors. Then, we can call it influence. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I sensed a mutual indifference behind polite smiles and had the overwhelming impression that, more and more frequently, I was watching people who didn't really know why they were living. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

That's the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Why did they devise censorship? To show a world which doesn't exist, an ideal world, or what they envisaged as the ideal world. And we wanted to depict the world as it was. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

For me, a certain sign of quality or class in art is that when I read, see or listen to something, I suddenly get an acute, clear feeling that somebody's formulated something which I've experienced or thought; exactly the same thing but with the help of a better sentence or better visual arrangement or better composition of sounds than I could ever have imagined. ... It's a description, an image which deeply concerns you, which deeply moves you and is your image. — Krzystof Kieslowski

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

This, among other things, is where the magic of the screen lies: that suddenly, as an audience, you find yourself in a state of tension because you're in a world shown to you by the director. That world is so coherent, so comprehensive, so succinct that you're transported into it and experience tension because you sense the tension between the characters. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking? — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Do you think Western Civilization has come to an end?
"We are clearly going through a cultural crisis at the moment. It's a phase where we are trying to distinguish values of life. People are looking for a solution and perhaps they will find it. But the radicality of the search will change their view of life."
So there is a cultural crises?
"There is a general crisis, but it's not the end of the world.
But the crisis it total?
"And so what? The crisis means that now the world is at the bottom of a sinus curve. In the nature of things, it will now rise and fall again later. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

(When asked what a director does) I help. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

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. — Krzysztof Kieslowski