Karin: It's so horrible to see your own confusion and understand it.
David: Virility means more than health.

Martin: If Hemingway could, we can. Let's go!
[Fredrik rejects Karin's attempt to console him]

Fredrik: Thanks, I can give myself all the pity I want.
Fredrik: I'm an artist.

Karin: Artist?

Fredrik: Yes, Princess, a thoroughbred artist: a poet with no poems, a painter with no pictures, a musician with no music. I despise ready... made art, the banal result of vulgar effort. My life is my work and dedicated to my love for you.
Karin: Funny, you always say and do the very right thing... and it's always wrong.
David: We draw a magic circle and shut out everything that doesn't agree with our secret games. Each time life breaks the circle, the games turn grey and ridiculous. Then we draw a new circle and build a new defense.

Karin: Poor little daddy.

David: Yes, poor little daddy, forced to live in reality.
[last lines]

Fredrik: Papa spoke to me.
Martin: You're hunting for themes. Your own daughter's mental illness. What a great bloody idea!
Martin: You're empty but capable. And now you're trying to fill your void with Karin's extinction. But how will God fit into that? It must make him more inscrutable than ever!
Fredrik: Father, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality was revealed. Do you know what I mean?

David: I do.

Fredrik: Reality was revealed, and I collapsed. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything.

David: I know.

Fredrik: I can't live in this new world.

David: Yes, you can. But you must have a support.

Fredrik: What kind of support? You mean a God? Give me a proof of his existance. You can't.

David: I can. But you gotta pay attention to what I say.

Fredrik: Yes. I need to listen.

David: I can only tell you a thought of my own hopes. It is to know that love exists for real in the human world.

Fredrik: A sort of special love, I suppose?

David: All kinds of it. The bigger and the smaller, the most absurd one and the most sublime one. All kinds of love.

Fredrik: What about the desire for love?

David: Desire and denying. Trust and distrust.

Fredrik: Then love is the proof?

David: I don't know if love is the proof of God's existance or if it's God itself.

Fredrik: To you, love and God are the same thing.

David: That thought makes me feel less empty; Makes my desperation less worse.

Fredrik: Go on, dad.

David: All of a sudden, emptiness turns into abundance, and desperation turns into life. It's like a temporary death's sentence strike.

Fredrik: Dad... if it's like how you say it is, then God is all over Karin. We love her so much.

David: Yes.

Fredrik: Can't that help her?

David: I think so.
Fredrik: Hey! Be careful now. Keep away from me. Stop hugging and kissing me. Stop sunbathing half naked. You disgust me. You know very well what I mean. Women are horrible. How they smell and move around, how they stick out their stomachs, how they comb their hair and talk. Makes me feel like a skinned rabbit!

Karin: Poor boy.

Fredrik: Thanks. I can give myself all the pity I want.

Through a Glass Darkly Quotes

Extended Reading

Through a Glass Darkly short comments

Trycia 2022-03-18 09:01:05

The hardest thing to face is my cowardice. When external pressure does not exist, I become my biggest prison. When I look at Bergman, I feel that there is no real dividing line between disease and health. Illness is just a means to fight against other more unpleasant things in life.
Ruben 2022-03-21 09:02:46

People say believing in God, but when you say seeing God with your own eyes is often dismissed as mentally ill / "We surround ourselves with circles to exclude things that don't fit the rules of our game, and whenever the circle is broken by reality, we Circle again to protect myself" This is the question I need to face the most right now/Love is God? In my subjective opinion, in Bergman's view, God may just be a spider who is always late.