… as far as the artistic, poetic value, I consider Nostalghia to be superior to The Sacrifice. Because Nostalghia is built on nothing, the film only exists insofar as the poetic image exists and that’s all. Whereas The Sacrifice is based upon classical dramaturgy.

… my films are not a personal expression but a prayer. When I make a film, it’s like a holy day. As if I were lighting a candle in front of an icon, or placing a bouquet of flowers before it.

I have often been asked what the Zone represents. There is only one answer: the Zone doesn’t exist. It’s Stalker himself who invented his Zone. He created it in order to take some very unhappy people there, and to impose on them the idea of hope.

… my main point is that a true artist does not experiment or search – he finds.

The Mirror is about my mother. It is not fiction; it is based on reality. There is not a single fictive episode in it.

I am seeking a principle of montage which would permit me to show the subjective logic – the thought, the dream, the memory – instead of the logic of the subject.

I think joy is a lack of understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves.

[Of Nostalghia] This is the first time, in my experience, that I have felt to such a degree that the film itself was capable of being the expression of psychological states of the author. The central character assumes the role of the alter-ego of the director.

… when I see a horse, it seems to me that I have life itself before me.

[Of Andrei Rublev] In a manner of speaking, the horse is the witness and the symbol of life throughout the film. By returning to the image of the horses in the last shots, we wanted to highlight that the source of all Rublev’s art is life itself.

from Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews, ed. John Gianvito