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.

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

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

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

I've never laid a cane on the back of a lord before, but if you force me to I shall speedily become used to the practice.

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.

The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.