The 75 best phrases of Stanley Kubrick
If we talk about movie masterminds, Stanley Kubric should have a place of honor. After all, he is not considered one of the best directors in all history for nothing. With world-wide admired films such as ‘The Shining’, ‘Lolita’ or ‘A Clockwork Orange’, this director and screenwriter managed to create cult films for all generations. With a very strong personality, this genius of the seventh art left us very powerful reflections about life.
- We recommend you read: "The 50 most famous cinema phrases (that everyone should know)"
Best Stanley Kubric Quotes
To remember him, we bring in this article the most memorable phrases of his authorship.
1. No matter how vast the darkness may be, we must project our own light.
Problems always have solutions.
2. The moment of a movie often prevents every stimulating detail or nuance from having a full impact the first time it is seen.
Talking about the impact a scene has on a movie.
3. Lucasfilm, has conducted research in many areas (movie theaters and theaters) and published the results in a report that confirms virtually all of their worst suspicions. For example, in one day, 50% of the prints were ruined. The amps are not good and the sound is bad. The lights are uneven… etc.
A study that showed how poor the maintenance of the cinema premises was, which ended up affecting the quality of the film.
4. If the work is good, everything that is said about the general is irrelevant.
If you enjoy your work, don't be swayed by other people's criticism.
5. No critic has ever clarified any aspect of my work to me.
Despite always being controversial, his films are iconic.
6. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.
Every film has been an idea before waiting to be developed.
7. It is not a message that I have tried to put into words. 2001 is a non-verbal experience; Out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there is only a little less than 40 minutes of dialogue.
A complex film but one that must be seen at least once in a lifetime.
8. New York is the only really hostile city. Perhaps there is a certain element of "lumpen literati" that is so dogmatically atheistic and materialistic and terrestrial that finds the grandeur of space and the gaze of mysteries of cosmic intelligence a anathema.
Your opinion on the big apple. Loved by many and hated by others.
9. Maybe it's vanity, this idea that work is greater than one's ability to describe it.
Can you describe your work?
10. It may sound ridiculous, but the best young filmmakers can do is grab a camera and create a movie of any kind.
For Kubrick, the best cinema is the one that is made spontaneously and real.
11. You sit in front of a board and suddenly your heart jumps. Your hand shakes when taking a piece and moving it. But what chess teaches you is that you have to stay there calmly and think if it really is a good idea or if there are other better ideas.
Apparently, chess was also another of his great passions.
12. But film critics, fortunately, rarely have any effect on the general public. Theaters fill up.
Even though the opinion of film critics matter. People have the ability to judge these works on their own.
13. I do not want to draw a verbal path for 2001, that each viewer feels obliged to follow or even improvise the theme of having lost the thread.
Talking about not wanting to pigeonhole this movie into a theme.
14. I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children using fear as motivation.
Fear never drives motivation, as people grow up under pressure to get it perfect or suffer the consequences.
15. If you can speak brilliantly about a problem, that can create the comforting illusion that the problem has been mastered.
The first step in solving a problem is believing that you can do it.
16. Generally speaking, I would say that there are elements in any good movie that can increase the viewer's interest and appreciation on a second viewing.
Every movie has its own elements that attract people to see it.
17. I think that if a film succeeds, it is by reaching a wide spectrum of people who had not had a thought about the destiny of man, his role in the cosmos and his relationship with higher forms of lifetime.
What is the movie that has made the most impression on you and what do you watch frequently?
18. What chess teaches is that you have to stay calm and think if the move you are going to make is really a good idea.
Chess is excellent for controlling emotions and impulsiveness.
19. The first really important book I read on film was Pudovkin's The Film Technique. So I had not yet touched a film camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and editing.
The book that changed everything at Stanley and made him love movies.
20. Once you accept that there are approximately one hundred billion stars in our galaxy, that each star is a sun capable of supporting life and that there are approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe, it is feasible to believe in God.
Another of Stanley Kubrick's great passions was the cosmos and all the mysteries that are contained in it.
21. You are free to speculate as you like about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film and that speculation is an indication that it has succeeded in taking the audience to a deeper level.
The unequivocal way to know if a film is successful or not is by how much it is talked about.
22. The destruction of this planet would be meaningless on a cosmic scale.
A reference to that we are just a small particle in the vast cosmos.
23. A director with a camera is as free as an author with a pen.
Movies always come to life thanks to the direction they get from their creator.
24. A man writes a novel, a man writes a symphony, it is essential for a man to make a movie.
The film is a fundamental part of art.
25. If someone understood it the first time they saw it, we would have failed in our intention. Why does someone have to watch the movie twice to get the message from him?
Stanley loved that his movies had a mystery that was difficult to solve.
26. It is reasonable to assume that there must, in fact, be hundreds of millions of planets where biological life was born and the possibility of that life developing intelligence is high.
Life on other planets is possible.
27. The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small ones, like prostitutes.
A harsh criticism of the world's socio-political system.
28. Art consists in reshaping life but not creating life, nor causing life.
Life can take on a new meaning with a movie.
29. There are few directors that you should see everything they did. I put Fellini, Bergman, and David Lean at the top of my first list and Truffaut at the top of the next level.
Talking about directors whose work you admire.
30. Other ancient planets must have progressed from biological species, which are fragile casings for the mind, to immortal mechanical entities.
A very interesting idea about the advancement of old planets that may exist.
31. Given that there is a planet in a stable orbit, neither too hot nor too cold, and given a few hundred million years of chemical reactions created by the interaction of solar energy in the chemistry of the planet, it is quite certain that life, in one form or another, will eventually will emerge.
It is very likely that there are other planets in the Universe that can generate life like Earth.
32. Children begin life with a pristine sense of wonder, an ability to experience total joy from something as simple as the green of a leaf.
Children are complete capsules of creativity.
33. He would say that the concept of God is at the heart of 2001 but not just any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God.
In this film, Kubrick makes reference to religious themes.
34. I never knew anything in school and I just read a book for pleasure at 19 years old.
You don't always get a full education in school.
35. Some people are surprised that I care about the theaters where the movie is shown.
A good director must worry about the quality of the locations where they will present their films.
36. A movie is (or should be) like music. It must be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme comes after the emotion, the meaning, after.
Movies play with feelings first.
37. As they grow up, the awareness of death and decay begins to permeate them and subtly erode their 'joie de vivre', their idealism.
Talking about the decline of the creative and imaginative spirit of children as they grow up.
38. The idea that a film should only be viewed once is an extension of our traditional conception of a film as fleeting entertainment rather than as a work of visual art.
Any good film can be enjoyed infinitely many times.
39. To make a movie you only need a camera, a recorder and some imagination.
A great director makes this art look simple.
40. There is something in the human personality that resents clear things, and conversely, something that attracts puzzles, riddles, and allegories.
We all love a great mystery that makes us think and analyze until we solve it.
41. How much we could appreciate La Gioconda today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the painting: This woman is smiling because she has faded teeth or because she is hiding a secret from her lover. It would have removed the appreciation of the beholder and would have put him in a reality other than his own. She didn't want that to happen.
Highlighting in a clear example, the importance for any work to have that element of mystery that we all want to decipher.
42. I don't always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.
A very interesting and important lesson that we must learn.
43. Experienced in a visual and emotional cinematic context, however, good films touch the deepest fiber of one's existence.
It is not only a visual experience, but something that moves all our senses.
44. The sense of mystery is the only emotion that is experienced more strongly in art than in life.
There is no clearer way to explain it.
45. Making movies is an intuitive process, just as I imagine composing music is intuitive. It is not a question of structuring a discussion.
Again the filmmaker reminds us of the true essence of the film, to do it in a natural way.
46. The screen is a magical medium. It has such power that it can hold interest, as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can convey.
Movies have the magic of making us forget reality for a moment.
47. Our psychic shell creates a buffer between us and the paralyzing notion that only a few years of existence separate life from death.
Reference on our interpretation of death and the way to avoid that thought.
48. Precisely the lack of meaning in life forces man to create his own meaning.
We all look for the meaning of our life.
49. Perhaps wanting to break records sounds like a very interested way to evaluate one's work.
High fame is a way of knowing that something is good, but this is not always true.
50. When you think of the gigantic technological advances that man has made in barely a millennium, less than a microsecond In the chronology of the Universe, can you imagine the evolutionary development that older life forms may have reached?
Again the filmmaker shows us his interest in the evolutions of ancient civilizations.
51. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
We should all have the right and the opportunity to choose what we want in our life.
52. To make a film completely by myself, something that at first I may not need to know much about other things, what I did need to know was about photography.
Handling photography is the first step in getting to know the cinema.
53. Anyone who has had the privilege of directing a film knows what I am talking about: although it may be like trying to write War and Peace boarded a bumper car at an amusement park, when you finally get it, there are no pleasures in this life that can match that sensation.
Not everything is glamor and magic in the cinema, it is also hard work where the best result is expected.
54. The dead only know one thing, it is better to be alive.
You can only achieve your dreams if you are alive.
55. I don't like giving interviews. There is always the danger that they will misquote you or, worse still, that they will quote exactly what you said.
Interviews can help someone's career or completely ruin it.
56. I think that, especially with a film that is so obviously different, breaking audience records means that people are saying nice things to others after seeing it, and isn't that really what it's all about?
That they speak well of your movie is the best marketing.
57. Whether we admit it or not, in every man's chest is a small chest of fear pointing to this final knowledge that eats away at his ego and his sense of purpose.
Fear lives within us and can prevent us from achieving success if we do not face it.
58. Never, ever, come close to power. And do not be friends with anyone powerful, it is dangerous.
Power doesn't always bring good things, it usually corrupts people.
59. If man just sat and thought of his immediate end and his horrible insignificance and loneliness in the cosmos, he would surely go insane, or succumb to a numbing or soporific sense of worthlessness.
Thinking about our existence and the importance of being in the Universe is terrifying.
60. Observation is a dying art.
An important phase of movies is looking at everything around to appreciate it.
61. I've always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surreal situation and presenting it realistically.
Talking about what he loves to show on screen with his works.
62. Now our Sun is not an old star and its planets are almost cosmic-age children.
Referring to the Sun and the planets that orbit around it.
63. I do not believe in any of the monotheistic religions of the Earth, but I believe that each one can construct a scientific definition of God.
Everyone should have their own vision of God.
64. Cinema has until recently been excluded from the category of art, a situation that makes me happy that it is finally changing.
Cinema has evolved in a very good way over the years.
65. We don't think we can hear a great piece of music just once, or see a great painting once, or even read a great book just once.
When have you heard or seen something for just once?
66. Some people can give interviews. They are very evasive and almost escape this hateful conception. Fellini is good; their interviews are very funny.
Not everyone is capable of handling interviews and others do it magnificently.
67. A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist when buying a little paper.
A filmmaker can write great stories with his camera.
68. I tried to create a visual experience that transcends the limitations of language and penetrates directly into the subconscious with its emotional and philosophical charge. As McLuhan would say, in 2001 the message is the medium.
He certainly succeeded.
69. They think that it is a kind of insane anxiety to worry about the rooms where my film is shown.
Why shouldn't they be concerned about the quality of movie theaters?
70. … Because, you might wonder: why should I bother to write a great symphony or fight for a living, or even love another, when I am but a momentary microbe in a speck of dust circling the unimaginable immensity of the space?
Talking about the discouragement that comes with analyzing all the value of our existence.
71. The true nature of the viewing experience is to give the viewer an instantaneous, visceral reaction that cannot and should not require further amplification.
The real impact a movie should make.
72. Our ability, unlike other animals, to conceptualize our own death creates enormous psychic suffering.
The difference of analyzing the death of animals vs humans.
73. Interest can produce learning, on a scale compared to fear like a nuclear explosion in a firecracker.
Any teaching is valuable if you have enough interest in learning it.
74. I have always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories.
We all love fairy tales.
75. The scariest fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent.
Indifference causes more pain than anything else.