When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.
Michelangelo Antonioni

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.
Michelangelo Antonioni

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.
Michelangelo Antonioni

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.
Michelangelo Antonioni

I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.
Michelangelo Antonioni

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.
Michelangelo Antonioni

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.
Michelangelo Antonioni