Film Quotes by Max von Sydow

David: Virility means more than health.
Martin: If Hemingway could, we can. Let's go!

Mia: You don't look so happy.
Antonius Block: No.
Mia: Are you tired?
Antonius Block: Yes. I have boring company.
Mia: You mean your squire?
Antonius Block: No, not him.
Mia: Who do you mean, then?
Antonius Block: Myself.

James the Younger: What is your name?
Jesus: Jesus
James the Younger: [excitedly] That's a good name!
Jesus: [smiling] Thank you.

Andreas Winkelman: I'm dead. No, that's too melodramatic. I'm not dead. But I live without self-respect. I know it sounds silly and pretentious. Most people live without self-esteem. Humiliated at heart, stifled, and spat upon. They're alive and that's all they know. They know of no alternative. Even if they did, they would never reach out for it. Can one be sick with humiliation? Is this a disease we have to live with? We talk so much about freedom. Isn't freedom a poison for the humiliated? Or is it merely a drug the humiliated use in order to endure? I can't live like this. I've given up. I can't stand it anymore. The days drag by. I'm choked by the food I swallow, the shit I get rid of, the words I say. The daylight screams at me every morning to get up. Sleep is only dreams that chase me. The darkness rustles with ghosts and memories. Has is ever occurred to you that the worse off people are, the less they complain? Finally, they're silent even if they're living creatures with nerves, eyes, and hands. Vast armies of victims and hangmen. The sun rises and falls, heavily. The cold approaches. The darkness. The heat. The smell. They're all silent. We can never leave. It's too late. Everything's too late.

Antonius Block: Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call.

Antonius Block: Have you met the devil? I want to meet him too.
Witch: Why do you want to do that?
Antonius Block: I want to ask him about God. He must know. He, if anyone.

Antonius Block: I met Death today. We are playing chess.

Antonius Block: I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency.

Antonius Block: I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.
Death: But He remains silent.
Antonius Block: I call out to Him in the darkness. But it's as if no one was there.
Death: Perhaps there isn't anyone.
Antonius Block: Then life is a preposterous horror. No man can live faced with Death, knowing everything's nothingness.
Death: Most people think neither of death nor nothingness.
Antonius Block: But one day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness.
Death: That day.
Antonius Block: I understand what you mean.

Antonius Block: I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.