Stanley Kubrick Quotations

Everything has changed, but the process of telling a story has not changed. It's like cavemen sitting around the fire; somebody's going to tell the story. Somebody is drawing on the wall. You're communicating. You're trying to learn and teach at the same time. You're your own student and you're your own teacher, but the process is of the communicating.

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

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.

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

A film needs more than you can give it in a lifetime.

You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it.

In any case, once you're dealing on a nonverbal level, ambiguity is unavoidable. But it's the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting - you don't need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to 'explain' them. “Explaining” them contributes nothing but a superficial 'cultural' value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living.

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.

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

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.