Top 100 Kubrick's Quotes
#1. 'Interstellar' may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular.
Richard Corliss
#2. Kubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution.
Marvin Minsky
#3. Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted.
Gus Van Sant
#4. In the whole history of movies, there has been nothing like Kubrick's vision. It was a vision of hope and wonder, of grace and of mystery, of humour and contradictions. It was a gift to us, and now it's a legacy.
Steven Spielberg
#5. I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine.
Dave Gibbons
#6. Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.
Ridley Scott
#7. Kubrick's films have life - they just never die.
R. Lee Ermey
#8. I watch 2001: A Space Odyssey every time it's on. I made the kids watch it every time, too and now they just love watching it. Stanley Kubrick's great. And Blade Runner is one of my top three science fiction films. A lot of it has come true.
Bruce Willis
#10. I'm not afraid of dying tomorrow, only of being killed.
Stanley Kubrick
#11. Stanley Kubrick was very selective when he went into a close-up. Every director has his taste in a performance, but Stanley would explore a scene to find what was most interesting for him.
Tom Cruise
#12. The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.
Stanley Kubrick
#13. There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.
Stanley Kubrick
#14. A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.
Stanley Kubrick
#15. God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.
Stanley Kubrick
#16. Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it's our job to do it one better.
Stanley Kubrick
#17. Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.
Tim Cahill
#18. The Beatles once approached Stanley Kubrick to do 'The Lord Of The Rings.' This was before Tolkien sold the rights. They approached him, and he said, 'No.'
Peter Jackson
#19. Kubrick ate it up. He loved it. He just let me go crazy.
R. Lee Ermey
#22. Don't do anything. Just tolerate me and let me suffer, knowing how you feel.
Stanley Kubrick
#23. Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it's great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001.
Jacques Rivette
#24. Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.
Stanley Kubrick
#25. [Stanley] Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly.
Woody Allen
#26. 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?
Stanley Kubrick
#27. Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.
Roberto Benigni
#28. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#29. When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.
Terry Southern
#30. If Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda had a baby, it would be Matthew Modine.
Stanley Kubrick
#31. Have you ever had a single moment's thought about my responsibilities?
Stanley Kubrick
#32. You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it.
Stanley Kubrick
#33. In 'Winter's Bone,' it's literally the director and the camera operator. That's it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people.
Bill Hader
#34. I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million.
Michel Gondry
#35. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#36. The hardest thing in making a movie is to keep in the front of your consciousness your original response to the material. Because that's going to be the thing that will make the movie. And the loss of that will break the movie.
Stanley Kubrick
#37. Stanley Kubrick made Shelly Duvall go crazy during 'The Shining.' It's like one of the best performances ever. Maybe he shouldn't have gone that far, but I love that movie.
Jonah Hill
#38. I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.
Jack Nicholson
#39. It's hard enough to make a film without everyone saying, "Hang on, is this version as good as the one Kubrick would have made?" In peoples' minds they'll always think if Kubrick had done it it would be so much better. You don't need that extra stress.
Chris Cunningham
#40. You know, Michael, it's not absolutely true in every case that nobody likes a smart ass.
Stanley Kubrick
#41. It's almost inherent, but I'm a massive [Stanley] Kubrick fan. I'm a big admirer of what guys like Christopher Nolan have been able to do. For me, to be able to try to make big films that reach a lot of people, and that hopefully have something to say, is a lofty goal, but that's my goal.
David Brooks
#42. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache ... This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.
Stanley Kubrick
#43. I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.
Stanley Kubrick
#44. You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They're admired and hero-worshipped but there is always present underlying desire to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.
Stanley Kubrick
#45. I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.
Stanley Kubrick
#46. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#47. Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions.
Bryan Singer
#48. I try to make everything creative because it's stimulating. There is this great Stanley Kubrick quote somewhere about how life is sort of bad and how creating is important because it lets a little light in.
Tavi Gevinson
#49. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#50. Stanley Kubrick was brilliant at getting under the audience's skin. He was very interested in the idea of, 'How can I tell this with just a camera?'
Tom Cruise
#51. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#52. Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.
Stanley Kubrick
#53. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#54. It's often the case with directors that they don't like to share credit, which is the case of Stanley. He would prefer just A Film By Stanley Kubrick including music and everything.
Terry Southern
#55. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#56. Know what it is the emotional statement to convey, and use taste and judgement to help the actors give their best possible performance.
Stanley Kubrick
#57. The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.
Stanley Kubrick
#59. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#60. A lot of cinematic influences on 'Descender' - Kubrick for sure. '2001: A Space Odyssey' is my favorite movie. It has been since I was 12. I just love that film.
Jeff Lemire
#62. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#63. Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?
Martin Scorsese
#64. I like David Lynch; I like Stanley Kubrick. I'm a big fan of Kubrick.
Olivier Megaton
#66. The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.
Stanley Kubrick
#67. One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.
Stanley Kubrick
#70. Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man.
Stanley Kubrick
#71. Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life.
Stanley Kubrick
#72. Why does Kubrick always chill our blood, and make us huddled up scared stiff with eyes wide shut? Because even dead he's still "Shinnying" with his old hand and his eye-catching plots.
Ana Claudia Antunes
#73. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#74. I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
Stanley Kubrick
#75. Kubrick never explained the ending to us, or what his intentions were. He didn't intend for it to be a predictable film.
Keir Dullea
#76. Private Joker is silly and he's ignorant but he's got guts and guts is enough.
Stanley Kubrick
#77. The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrick
#78. It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.
Stanley Kubrick
#79. You either connect or you don't connect. It's not the end of the world. It's a movie.
Stanley Kubrick
#80. The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963
Stanley Kubrick
#81. There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
Stanley Kubrick
#83. The director's job is to know what emotional statement he wants a character to convey in his scene or his line, and to exercise taste and judgment in helping the actor give his best possible performance.
Stanley Kubrick
#85. The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.
Stanley Kubrick
#86. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#88. I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.
Kevin McCloud
#89. How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.
Stanley Kubrick
#90. Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.
Stanley Kubrick
#91. I used and abused drugs and alcohol. When I stopped doing that it became a lot clearer that life goes from inside to giving as opposed to taking and destroying.
Stanley Kubrick
#93. I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films.
Stanley Kubrick
#94. I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, Mr. President, but I do say not more than ten to twenty million dead depending upon the breaks.
Stanley Kubrick
#95. I really wanted to write the way Kubrick makes films - 'Strangelove,' '2001', 'Clockwork Orange', 'Barry Lyndon' - they're all so different.
Philip Kerr
#96. I've never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, 'don't try to fly too high,' or whether it might also be thought of as 'forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.
Stanley Kubrick
#97. 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.
Stanley Kubrick
#98. Either you care, or you don't. There's no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.
Stanley Kubrick
#99. Stanley Kubrick, I had been told, hates interviews. It's hard to know what to expect of the man if you've only seen his films. One senses in those films painstaking craftsmanship, a furious intellect at work, a single-minded devotion.
Tim Cahill
#100. Busy people begrudge the days being short.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Stanley Kubrick
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