Stanley Kubrick

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

“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....”

“I am afraid of aeroplanes. I've been able to avoid flying for some time, but I suppose, if I had to, I would. Perhaps it's a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. At one time,...”

“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 ri...”

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

“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...”

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

“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...”

“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 thi...”

“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 almos...”

“It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.”

“It takes more discipline than you might imagine to think, even for thirty seconds, in the noisy, confusing, high-pressure atmosphere of a film set. But a few seconds' thought can often preve...”

“Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated unt...”

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

“Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it's inferi...”

“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.”

“What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?”