Stanley Kubrick

Director

57 Quotes

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

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

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.

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

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.

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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