Quotes About Stanley Kubrick

#1. 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

#2. I like David Lynch; I like Stanley Kubrick. I'm a big fan of Kubrick.

Olivier Megaton

#3. '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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. Stanley Kubrick is one of the geniuses of this century.

Roberto Benigni

#7. [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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. Really, what I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.

James Gray

#13. I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

Ian Watson

#14. Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique ... completely separate entities.

Frank Darabont

#15. 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

#16. Stanley Kubrick knew we had good graphics around MIT and came to my lab to find out how to do it. We had some really good stuff. I was very impressed with Kubrick; he knew all the graphics work I had ever heard of, and probably more.

Marvin Minsky

#17. I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out.

Joel Coen

#18. 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

#19. Most books about Stanley Kubrick were written by people who never met him and gathered information from articles written by others who didn't know him either.

Jan Harlan

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien', 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.

Christopher Nolan

#23. Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts.

Wesley Morris

#24. 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

#25. [The way Stanley Kubrick] tells a story is antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories.

Steven Spielberg

#26. I was going to school thinking I was going to do something entirely different, thought acting was just a hobby at that point, met Stanley Kubrick and was like, 'Whoa, this can be an art form, and you can really move people the way you do simply by acting.'

Vinessa Shaw

#27. 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

#28. For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.

Keir Dullea

#29. I'd worked in Clockwork Orange with Stanley Kubrick and since Stanley was such a prestigious director this opened all sorts of doors for me - one of them being Star Wars.

David Prowse

#30. [Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups.

Sydney Pollack

#31. 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

#32. The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

Peter Weir

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

Stanley Kubrick

#34. Private Joker is silly and he's ignorant but he's got guts and guts is enough.

Stanley Kubrick

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life.

Stanley Kubrick

#39. Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man.

Stanley Kubrick

#40. Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.

Stanley Kubrick

#41. It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

Stanley Kubrick

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. How does anybody ever think of anything?

Stanley Kubrick

#45. 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

#46. Like the man said, can happiness buy money?

Stanley Kubrick

#47. 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

#48. You either care or you don't.

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#50. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

#52. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films.

Stanley Kubrick

#58. Observation is a dying art.

Stanley Kubrick

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. Everybody has their black moments.

Stanley Kubrick

#63. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#66. 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

#67. What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?

Stanley Kubrick

#68. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

#70. Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

Stanley Kubrick

#71. I didn't want murder. It's all gone wrong.

Stanley Kubrick

#72. If Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda had a baby, it would be Matthew Modine.

Stanley Kubrick

#73. 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

#74. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

#76. Don't do anything. Just tolerate me and let me suffer, knowing how you feel.

Stanley Kubrick

#77. The best education in film is to make one

Stanley Kubrick

#78. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#82. God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.

Stanley Kubrick

#83. 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

#84. I'm not afraid of dying tomorrow, only of being killed.

Stanley Kubrick

#85. 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

#86. 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

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

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#89. All my life I've always spoiled the things that meant the most to me.

Stanley Kubrick

#90. I'm a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films.

Stanley Kubrick

#91. 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

#92. 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.

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#94. 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.

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#97. Take a stress pill and think things over
HAL in 2001

Stanley Kubrick

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

Stanley Kubrick

#99. Suppose by chance you do get picked up. What have you done? You shot a horse; that isn't first degree murder; in fact, it isn't even murder; in fact, I don't know what it is.

Stanley Kubrick

#100. 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