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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.

-Stanley Kubrick

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In Any Case, Once

Stanley Kubrick

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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.

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Critical Opinion On My Films Has Always Been Salvaged By What I Would Call Subsequent Critical Opinion.

I Didn't Want Murder. It's All Gone Wrong.

How Does Anybody Ever Think Of Anything?

Anybody Who Runs Is A Vc. Anybody Who Stands Still Is A Well-disciplined Vc.

One Does Not Have To Make Frank Capra Movies To Like People.

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.

The World's Religions, For All Their Parochialism, Did Supply A Kind Of Consolation For This Great Ache. This Shattering Recognition Of Our Mortality Is At The Root Of Far More Mental Illness Than I Suspect Even Psychiatrists Are Aware.

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.

All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy.

The Most Terrifying Fact About The Universe Not That It Is Hostile But That It Is Indifferent

Nothing Is As Dangerous As A Sure Thing.

It's Crazy How You Can Get Yourself In A Mess Sometimes And Not Even Be Able To Think About It With Any Sense And Yet Not Be Able To Think About Anything Else.

The Great Nations Have Always Acted Like Gangsters, And The Small Nations Like Prostitutes.

The First Really Important Book I Read About Filmmaking Was The Film Technique By Pudovkin. This Was Some Time Before I Had Ever Touched A Movie Camera And It Opened My Eyes To Cutting And Montage.

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.

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.

There's Something In The Human Personality Which Resents Things That Are Clear, And Conversely, Something Which Is Attracted To Puzzles, Enigmas, And Allegories.

Like The Man Said, Can Happiness Buy Money?

Man Isn't A Noble Savage, He's An Ignoble Savage. He Is Irrational, Brutal, Weak, Silly, Unable To Be Objective About Anything Where His Own Interests Are Involved-that About Sums It Up. I'm Interested In The Brutal And Violent Nature Of Man Because It's A True Picture Of Him. And Any Attempt To Create Social Institutions On A False View Of The Nature Of Man Is Probably Doomed To Failure.

I'm A Slave To My Imagination In Terms Of Making Narrative Films.

You're Free To Speculate As You Wish About The Philosophical And Allegorical Meaning Of The Film—and Such Speculation Is One Indication That It Has Succeeded In Gripping The Audience At A Deep Level—but I Don't Want To Spell Out A Verbal Road Map For 2001 That Every Viewer Will Feel Obligated To Pursue Or Else Fear He's Missed The Point.

Regret Isn't Going To Get Me Anywhere. It's Like Being Obsessed With Something. It Doesn't Bring You Anywhere.

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.

The Destruction Of This Planet Would Have No Significance On A Cosmic Scale: To An Observer In The Andromeda Nebula, The Sign Of Our Extinction Would Be No More Than A Match Flaring For A Second In The Heavens: And If That Match Does Blaze In The Darkness There Will Be None To Mourn A Race That Used A Power That Could Have Lit A Beacon In The Stars To Light Its Funeral Pyre. The Choice Is Ours.

It's A Mistake To Confuse Pity With Love.

One Man Writes A Novel. One Man Writes A Symphony. It Is Essential That One Man Make A Film.

Some People Demand A Five-line Capsule Summary. Something You'd Read In A Magazine. They Want You To Say, 'this Is The Story Of The Duality Of Man And The Duplicity Of Governments.' I Hear People Try To Do It -- Give The Five-line Summary -- But If A Film Has Any Substance Or Subtlety, Whatever You Say Is Never Complete, It's Usually Wrong, And It's Necessarily Simplistic: Truth Is Too Multifaceted To Be Contained In A Five-line Summary. If The Work Is Good, What You Say About It Is Usually Irrelevant.

The Destruction Of This Planet Would Have No Significance On A Cosmic Scale.

[making Movies] You're Not Trying To Capture Reality, You're Trying To Capture A Photograph Of Reality.

I'm Happy - At Times - Making Films. I'm Certainly Unhappy Not Making Films.

If It Can Be Written, Or Thought, It Can Be Filmed.

If You Really Want To Communicate Something, Even If It’s Just An Emotion Or An Attitude, Let Alone An Idea, The Least Effective And Least Enjoyable Way Is Directly. It Only Goes In About An Inch. But If You Can Get People To The Point Where They Have To Think A Moment What It Is You’re Getting At, And Then Discover It, The Thrill Of Discovery Goes Right Through The Heart.

Never Say No To An Idea - You Never Know How That Idea Will Ignite Another Idea.

Art Consists Of Reshaping Life But It Does Not Create Life, Nor Cause Life.

Here's To Five Miserable Months On The Wagon And The Irreparable Harm That It's Caused Me.

Irreparable Harm

A Satirist Is Someone Who Has A Very Skeptical View Of Human Nature, But Who Still Has The Optimism To Make Some Sort Of A Joke Out Of It. However Brutal That Joke Might Be.

The Feel Of The Experience Is The Important Thing, Not The Ability To Verbalize Or Analyze It.

Bad Films Gave Me The Courage To Try Making A Movie

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.

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End Of The World

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I Will Say That The God Concept Is At The Heart Of 2001 But Not Any Traditional, Anthromorphic Image Of God. I Don't Believe In Any Of Earth's Monotheistic Religions, But I Do Believe That One Can Construct An Intriguing Scientific Definition Of God, Once You Accept The Fact That There Are Approximately 100 Billion Stars In Our Galaxy Alone, That Each Star Is A Life-giving Sun And That There Are Approximately 100 Billion Galaxies In Just The Visible Universe.

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Used And Abused

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 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

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Independent Filmmaking

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The Very Meaninglessness Of Life Forces Man To Create His Own Meaning.

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I Haven't Had One Sexual Thought Since The Court Martial.

The Very Meaninglessness Of Life Forces Man To Create His Own Meaning. If It Can Be Written Or Thought, It Can Be Filmed.

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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.

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All My Life I've Always Spoiled The Things That Meant The Most To Me.

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.

What Do You Take Me For? A Fourteen Karat Sucker?

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I'm Not Afraid Of Dying Tomorrow, Only Of Being Killed.

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Thinking About You

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.

Independent Filmmaking

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.

A Filmmaker Has Almost The Same Freedom As A Novelist Has When He Buys Himself Some Paper.

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.

Take A Stress Pill And Think Things Over-- Hal In 2001

I Have Always Enjoyed Dealing With A Slightly Surrealistic Situation And Presenting It In A Realistic Manner. I've Always Liked Fairy Tales And Myths, Magical Stories. I Think They Are Somehow Closer To The Sense Of Reality One Feels Today Than The Equally Stylized 'realistic' Story In Which A Great Deal Of Selectivity And Omission Has To Occur In Order To Preserve Its 'realist' Style.

You're Constantly Changing Man. But The Film's Not Changing. The Film Stays The Same. That's The Beautiful Aspect Of It.

A Film Needs More Than You Can Give It In A Lifetime.

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.

I, Uh, Don't Think It's Quite Fair To Condemn A Whole Program Because Of A Single Slip-up, Sir.

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 Do Not Always Know What I Want, But I Do Know What I Don't Want.

I Don't Like Doing Interviews. There Is Always The Problem Of Being Misquoted Or, What's Even Worse, Of Being Quoted Exactly.

My Reputation Has Grown Slowly.

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.

Meaning Of Life

Shooting A Movie Is The Worst Milieu For Creative Work Ever Devised By Man.

In His Essay On The Uncanny, Das Unheimliche, Freud Said That The Uncanny Is The Only Feeling Which Is More Powerfully Experienced In Art Than In Life. If The Horror Genre Required Any Justification, I Should Think This Alone Would Serve As Its Credentials.

From The Very Beginning, All Of My Films Have Divided The Critics. Some Have Thought Them Wonderful, And Others Have Found Very Little Good To Say. But Subsequent Critical Opinion Has Always Resulted In A Very Remarkable Shift To The Favorable. In One Instance, The Same Critic Who Originally Rapped The Film Has Several Years Later Put It On An All-time Best List. But Of Course, The Lasting And Ultimately Most Important Reputation Of A Film Is Not Based On Reviews, But On What, If Anything, People Say About It Over The Years, And On How Much Affection For It They Have.

I'm Just An Old Man And I Smell Bad, Remember?

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.

Everything Has Already Been Done. Every Story Has Been Told Every Scene Has Been Shot. It’s Our Job To Do It One Better.

You're An Idealist, And I Pity You As I Would The Village Idiot.

No Philosophy Based On An Incorrect View Of The Nature Of Man Is Likely To Produce Social Good.

You Either Care Or You Don’t.

Private Joker Is Silly And He's Ignorant But He's Got Guts And Guts Is Enough.

Know What It Is The Emotional Statement To Convey, And Use Taste And Judgement To Help The Actors Give Their Best Possible Performance.

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 Hardest Thing In Making A Movie Is To Keep In The Front Of Your Consciousness Your Original Response To The Material. Because That's Going To Be The Thing That Will Make The Movie. And The Loss Of That Will Break The Movie.

Don't Do Anything. Just Tolerate Me And Let Me Suffer, Knowing How You Feel.

If Gary Cooper And Henry Fonda Had A Baby, It Would Be Matthew Modine.

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