Writing Guidance from Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1978 film Stalker is heavy-handed at times with intense monologues on the meaning of life, but a couple of gems from The Writer bear repeating: While I am digging for the truth, so much happens to it that, instead of discovering the truth, I dig up a heap of, pardon… I’d better not name it.

It’s a lie. I don’t give a damn about inspiration. But how can I put a name to what is that I want? How I am to know I don’t want what I want? Or that I really don’t want what I don’t want? These are intangibles where the moment you name them, their meaning vanishes like jellyfish in the sun.