Stanley Kubrick Quotes

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes, and take things off the shelf. If I don’t like the book after a bit, I don’t finish it. But I like to be surprised.

Never say no to an idea – you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.

Either you care, or you don’t. There’s no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.

What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?

Here’s to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it’s caused me.

Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life nor cause life.

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

Any time you take a chance you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a million dollar job.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

When you’re making a film, you have to make most of your decisions on the run, and there is a tendency to always shoot from the hip.

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.

Be suspicious of people who have, or crave, power. Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it’s inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don’t like living there.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

The best education in film is to make one

It takes more discipline than you might imagine to think, even for thirty seconds, in the noisy, confusing, high-pressure atmosphere of a film set. But a few seconds’ thought can often prevent a serious mistake being made about something that looks good at first glance.

Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better.

The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without it being plainly stated. When you say something directly, it’s simply not as potent as it is when you allow people to discover it for themselves.

Among a great many other things that chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing and to think just as objectively when you’re in trouble.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity–no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.

You’re an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you’re in trouble

It’s crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write ‘War and Peace’ in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.