Quotes from Stanley Kubrick

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

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

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.

Have you ever had a single moment's thought about my responsibilities?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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.

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

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

My period as a young teenager when you really listen to music so you can get understand a little bit more about what the music is was, say, 1965 to 1968. I was just lucky to be in those times.

No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

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.

The destruction of this universe would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.

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.

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

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.

I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists. Neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.