Quotes by Stanley Kubrick

If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. The worlds religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache.

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

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I dont want.

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.

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

The truth of a thing is the feel of it not the think of it.

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

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.

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

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.

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 youre in trouble.

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.

I am afraid of aeroplanes. Ive been able to avoid flying for some time, but I suppose, if I had to, I would. Perhaps its a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. At one time, I had a pilots licence and 160 hours of solo time on single-engine light aircraft. Unfortunately, all that seemed to do was make me mistrust large aeroplanes.

Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.

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

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.

Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, its completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, Ive read that I wear a football helmet in the car.

“The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”