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.
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.
You either connect or you don’t connect. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a movie.
There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.
Never say no to an idea – you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.
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 test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.
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.
The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.
If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.
The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.
The best education in film is to make one.
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.
I never learned anything at all in school and didn’t read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.
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.
I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.
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.
Don’t get obsessed with not liking a movie.
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.
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.