Krzysztof Kieslowski Quotes & Trivia

Quotes

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

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

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The films should be influenced by the individual commandments to the same degree that the commandments influence our daily lives.

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.

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

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.

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 hero, although I keep on trying.

I can identify with what Bergman says about life, about what he says about love. I identify more or less with his attitude towards the world... towards men and women and what we do in everyday life... forgetting about what is most important.

Andrei Tarkovsky was one of the greatest directors of recent years. He's dead, like most of them. That is, most of them are dead or have stopped making films. Or else, somewhere along the line, they've irretrievably lost something, some individual sort of imagination, intelligence, or way of narrating a story. Tarkovsky was certainly one of those who hadn't lost this.

Trivia

Was denied acceptance into film school three times.

Announced his retirement from film-making after completing "Red".

Battled complications of AIDS at the time of his death (according to "Hello" magazine obituary), in addition to having had open-heart surgery.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989

Had one daughter Marta (b. 1972)

At one point he was filming Three Color: White while editing Three Colors: Blue and writing Three Colors: Red.