from The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

-I wish to confess as best I can but my heart is void. The void is mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of my dreams.
-Yet you do not want to die.
-Yes, I do.
-What are you waiting for?
-Knowledge.
-You want a guarantee.
-Call it what you will. Is it so hard to conceive God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a mist of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of those of us who want to believe, but cannot? And those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does he go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear him out of my heart but He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. Do you hear me?
-I hear you.
-I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out his hand, show His face, speak to me. But He is silent. I cry to him in the dark but there seems to be no one there.
-Perhaps there is no one there.
-Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is nothing.
-Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.
-Until they stand on the edge of life and see the Darkness.
-Ah, that day.
-I see. We must make an idol of our fear and call it God.
-You are uneasy.
-Death visited me this morning. We are playing chess. This respite enables me to perform a vital errand.
-What errand?
-My whole life has been a meaningless search. I say it without bitterness or self-reproach. I know it is the same for all. But I want to use my respite for one significant action.

[Who is crying? The girl in the dirt. Most honest, most compelling. "Turn not away Thy face." (Exhortation to us in place of God.)

Bar scene as proof against God. Goodness, even fear of God, become irrelevant.

Mary/Joseph. Last supper. How would the knight accept being placed as God?

"Why do people always torment themselves?" just before Joseph's beaten appearance. Question of choice.]

"To believe is to suffer. It is like loving someone in the dark who never answers." [Lover as God.]

-Love is nothing but lust and cheating and lies.
-It hurts all the same.
-Love is the blackest of all plagues. But you don't even die of it, and usually it passes.
-No, mine isn't passing.
-Of course it will. Only fools die of love. If everything is imperfect in this world, love is perfect in its imperfection.
-You're lucky. You believe in your own twaddle.
-Who says I believe it?

-I must ask him about God. Surely he knows.
-You can see him anytime...Look into my eyes. Well, do you see him?
-I see terror. Nothing else.
-Nothing? No one?
-No.
-Is he not behind you?
-There is no one.
-He is with me everywhere. If I stretch out my hand, I feel him. Even now. The fire won't hurt me.
-Has he said so?
-I know it.
-Has he said so?
-I know. I know. You must see him, too. The priests could see him, and the soldiers. They dare not touch me.

-What have you done to the child?
-Will you never stop asking questions?
-No. Never.
-But you get no answer.

-What does she see?
-She has no pain now.
-You don't answer. Who will look after that child? The angels? God? Satan? No, emptiness, milord.
-It cannot be.
-Look at her eyes. Her poor mind is making a discovery. Emptiness!
-No.
-We are helpless. We see what she sees and her terror is ours. Poor child! I can't stand it!

"It is useless. Utterly useless! Do you hear? I'm consoling you."

-And you will reveal your secrets.
-I have no secrets.
-So you know nothing?
-I am unknowing.