Andrei Tarkovsky // "The director's task is to recreate life: its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen...even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable... All debate about what may or may not be shown can only be a pedestrian and immoral attempt to distort the truth. Dostoyevsky said: 'They always say that art has to reflect life and all that. But it's nonsense: the writer, the poet himself creates life such as it has never quite been before him.' The artist's inspiration comes into being somewhere in the deepest recesses of his 'I'. It cannot be dictated by external, 'business' considerations. It is bound to be related to his psyche and his conscience; it springs from the totality of his world-view. If it is anything less, then it is doomed from the outset to be artistically void and sterile. It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people's ideas."