Stanley Kubrick Quotes

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

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

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.

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

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

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

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 best education in film is to make one

There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.

Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.

You either connect or you don't connect. It's not the end of the world. It's a movie.

Don't get obsessed with not liking a movie.

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.

The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.

[Making movies] you're not trying to capture reality, you're trying to capture a photograph of reality.

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

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

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

Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

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

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

A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be.

No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.

A film needs more than you can give it in a lifetime.

Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie

You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it.

I'm just an old man and I smell bad, remember?

I've never laid a cane on the back of a lord before, but if you force me to I shall speedily become used to the practice.

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.

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

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

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.

Sanitised violence in movies has been accepted for years. What seems to upset everybody now is the showing of the consequences of violence.

I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.

The lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

Like the man said, can happiness buy money?