Robert Bresson Quotes

When I see a colour or hear a sound, I am aware of something, and not of nothing.

The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.

I like chocolate. I don’t eat it, but I like the smell of it. People can drink with their eyes; I can eat with my nose. I would love to have a perfume based on chocolate.

I couldn't feel so I learned to touch.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

I can actually see the sound in my head. I can actually see it... But each sound is different so this one has that sparkle, there is a sparkle to the sound.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

[L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch . . .

If you understand how the real world feels and looks and sounds it is much easier to create a virtual version of the real world.

Sight is by much the noblest of the senses. We receive our notices from the other four, through the organs of sensation only. We hear, we feel, we smell, we taste, by touch. But sight rises infinitely higher. It is refined above matter, and equals the faculty of spirit.

Sight is the least sensual of all the senses. And we strain ourselves to see, see, see--everything, everything through the eye, inone mode of objective curiosity.

Allie noticed it all, every sound, every thought. Her senses had come alive, invigorating her, and she felt her mind drifting through the last few weeks.

It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality.

Hearing is the motion of molecules; sound is a wave in the atmosphere; solidity is the characteristic of spatial juxtaposition of atoms; smell is something given off by a body, rather than something belonging to a body.

To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements. ... if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds.

He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.

How fast the ears learned to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.

Music stands in a much closer connection with pure sensation than any of the other arts.

The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.

As they say of the blind, Sounds are the things I see.

Every time I hear sounds, I see pictures. Then, I start getting ideas. It just drives me crazy

The human body is amazing," she said. If you deprive it of one sensory input, the other senses take over, almost instantly.

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch.