top of page

"What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Perception quotes

"I tell you as well as myself: what we see with our own eyes is nothing other than a cloud concealing what we should perceive with our inner sight, while what we listen to with our ears is merely a ringing sound disturbing what we should understand with our hearts. When we see a man being taken to prion by a police officer let us not hasten to assume he is a wrong-doer. When we see a corpse, and a man standing beside it with bloodstained hands, let us not conclude that this is a victim and his assassin. When we hear one man singing and another lamenting, let us ascertain which one of the two is truly happy."

"People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so."

"To all apparent beauties blind, each blemish strikes an envious mind."

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things."

"Say, there is a book written by Tolstoy sitting right there on the table. To our unique human consciousness, the reality of the papers in the book, is infinitely different from the valuable literature that they possess. For the kind of consciousness possessed by the bug which eats those papers, literature is non-existent, yet for the Human Consciousness, literature has a greater value of truth than the papers themselves."

"What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?"

"The puzzle that is created by seeing the 'relative' is called worldly life (sansaar)! It would never be this way had one seen the 'Real'."

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

"When blackened night falls, darkness exists if one chooses to rely on sight as thy only guide."
Explore more quotes by Satyajit Ray


"The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves."


"I wouldn't mind taking a rest for three or four months, but I have to keep on making films for the sake of my crew, who just wait for the next film because they're not on a fixed salary."


"It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn't want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical."


"My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful."


"I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation."


"When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century."


"I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs."


"At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music."
bottom of page