“[The Shining] was a hell of an experience. Stanley was obsessive about what he was aiming at. While it drove me nuts, I deeply respected it because that’s the way I treat everybody who works for me. That took a lot of doing. Stanley pushed me very, very hard. I did three hundred drawings. Some of them were terrific. I have the deepest admiration for that process. It’s a process in which I engage when I’m doing my work. I drive myself crazy, I drive people who work for me nuts in the same way that Stanley did it to me. That is the nature of what you have to do if you want to do something good.
I just loved working with him. I love his mode. He is totally in a cocoon and the cocoon is bounded by the studio and there’s another cocoon at the house. Stanley travels from one cocoon to the other through a tiny little tunnel. He lives in a monastic form in his mental attitude and his emotional attitude toward what he’s doing. Stanley will unhesitatingly junk things and do them over because he thinks they can be improved, changed or made better. There may be inner anguish, but he’s cool outside. I admire that absorptive, obsessive, concentrated force field that he builds around himself. He’s an extraordinary guy.”
— Saul Bass on the poster process for The Shining (via Stanley Kubrick: A Biography)