Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the negative impact of trying to adhere to societal expectations or limitations, symbolized by being 'on the wagon.'
Stanley Kubrickβs quote speaks to the personal toll of strictly adhering to a commitment, particularly in regards to sobriety or self-control, suggesting that the struggle itself can lead to suffering and harm. It highlights the irony that in trying to improve one's life or behavior, the resultant pressure and misery can be damaging.
In practice
During a support group meeting discussing challenges with addiction, this quote can highlight the pitfalls of rigid self-discipline.
The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it's inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don't like living there.
I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
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.
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
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.
The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.
You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.
People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.
We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby.
To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.
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