21 quotes
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner.
Kubrick : Inside a Film Artist's Maze (2000)
I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.
Kubrick on Barry Lyndon : An interview with Michel Ciment (1982)
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.
Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine (2013)
I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation.
Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine (2013)
There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
Kubrick : Inside a Film Artist's Maze (2000)
If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.
The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970)
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.
In an infinite, eternal universe, the point is that anything is possible, and it's unlikely that we can even begin to scratch the surface of the full range of possibilities.
Playboy Interview (1968)
Never, ever go near power. Don't become friends with anyone who has real power. It's dangerous.
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.
One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.
Is it good or bad? Is it necessary? Can I get rid of it? Does it work?
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.
Video acceptance speech of the D.W. Griffiths Lifetime Achievement Award (1999)
The reason movies are often so bad out here isn't because the people who make them are cynical money hacks. Most of them are doing the very best they can; they really want to make good movies. The trouble is with their heads, not their hearts.
Against the American Grain (1962)
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.
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 and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
Think [Schindler's List] was about the Holocaust?... That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. ‘'Schindler’s List’' is about 600 who don’t. Anything else?
Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick (1999)
Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake … but I do deny them my essence.
The important point is that all the standard attributes assigned to God in our history could equally well be the characteristics of biological entities who billions of years ago were at a stage of development similar to man's own and evolved into something as remote from man as man is remote from the primordial ooze from which he first emerged.
Playboy Interview (1968)