The protective shell

I wrote my films not really understanding what I’d written. Then I shot them, and they meant certain things to me. But what they meant—that I didn’t really understand until afterwards. Long afterwards. If my relationships to my own products are so odd, it’s because often when I’m writing and shooting a film I’m inside some sort of protective shell. I hardly analyze what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. I rationalize afterwards.

—Ingmar Bergman, quoted by Eric Lax in Conversations with Woody Allen