Top 100 Charlie Kaufman Quotes
#1. What is love anyway? From my new vantage point, I realize that love is nothing more than a messy conglomeration of need, desperation, fear of death and insecurity about penis size.
Charlie Kaufman
#3. I spend a lot of time in preproduction working with authors, and a lot of time in postproduction.: editing, music, all that sort of stuff. Casting. On the set there's not a lot for me to do.
Charlie Kaufman
#4. There are things that aren't represented in movies that are a big part of everyone's life. This is a movie about health and about the body.
Charlie Kaufman
#6. There's theater in life, obviously, and there's life in theater.
Charlie Kaufman
#7. I want to do my own thing, and I'm trying to get closer to realizing that as a filmmaker.
Charlie Kaufman
#8. The biggest thing that I came across, right off the bat, was that you can't shoot this like a regular movie with multiple takes. You have to, because it's such a protracted process, break it down to the frame and pretty much get one shot.
Charlie Kaufman
#9. And then to see the whole movie, you're pretty much waiting until the end of production. And the major lifting in terms of editing and all that stuff is done before you shoot the movie. That's an unusual way to work.
Charlie Kaufman
#11. I try when I'm writing to leave enough "space" for people to have their own interpretation, and not to direct it toward one conclusion. Then the audience would not be reacting, because they are being preached to or lectured at. I don't have that much to say that I think people should listen to me.
Charlie Kaufman
#13. There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.
Charlie Kaufman
#14. I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.
Charlie Kaufman
#15. I'm not a celebrity. I'm intentionally and defiantly not a celebrity. I don't have any interest in it. I don't have any talent for it. I keep my personal life out of my public life as cleanly as I can.
Charlie Kaufman
#16. I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.
Charlie Kaufman
#17. I think that people create the world that they live in. Your existence is very subjective, and you tell stories and organize the world outside of you into these stories to help you understand it.
Charlie Kaufman
#20. When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?
Charlie Kaufman
#21. Every day of your life, you have information that enters your head, and that information informs your understanding of things, or shifts it, or changes it, or deepens it, or confuses you. Every day, every moment of every day - it's like this thing that happens.
Charlie Kaufman
#22. It occurred to me that every work of art is a synecdoche, there's no way around it. Every creative work that someone does can only represent an aspect of the whole of something. I can't think of an exception to that.
Charlie Kaufman
#23. My time on the set is the least of my involvement. Most of my time is in pre-production and post-production.
Charlie Kaufman
#24. I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
Charlie Kaufman
#25. Seriously, I don't consider myself a writer. I don't think I have writing talent. But I will continue to do it.
Charlie Kaufman
#26. I don't think the world objectively exists the way we think it exists. There's a constant sort of storytelling process.
Charlie Kaufman
#27. I think everything I do is based on my experience in the world in one way or another.
Charlie Kaufman
#28. I like for people to figure things out for themselves. It's not like I have the right answer, but if I have a visceral reaction to something, I'm sure that other people will, too.
Charlie Kaufman
#29. We're all one thing, like cells in a body. 'Cept we can't see the body. The way fish can't see the ocean. And so we envy each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell.
Charlie Kaufman
#30. I often have a theme in mind when I'm starting. I know that I want everything to be in a world of, say, evolution, or guilt.
Charlie Kaufman
#32. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.
Charlie Kaufman
#33. I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.
Charlie Kaufman
#34. I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.
Charlie Kaufman
#35. The way I work is not the way that you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you, and if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity I will be moved.
Charlie Kaufman
#36. I want to create situations that give people something to think about.
Charlie Kaufman
#37. I really don't have any solutions and I don't like movies that do.
Charlie Kaufman
#38. There is so much crap in the world, both in show and other businesses, that I try to be vulnerable myself, in the hopes that there is some truth I can get to, that makes people feel less alone in the world.
Charlie Kaufman
#39. I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.
Charlie Kaufman
#40. As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
Charlie Kaufman
#41. There are so many people who are making movies now who can't get any kind of distribution, so the market seems like it's flooded.
Charlie Kaufman
#42. David Lynch is very important to me, and he does dreamlike movies, but my dreams are not like David Lynch's dreams. I have no interest in copying anybody's work. It would never occur to me to want this to look like someone else's thing.
Charlie Kaufman
#43. Do not simplify. Do not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure.
Charlie Kaufman
#44. I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.
Charlie Kaufman
#45. As I'm writing, I start to see connections, and themes I didn't see, and that sparks other things. So then I go back and rewrite things or alter them. It's a combination of intuition and a lot of finessing. It becomes a combination of the rational and the irrational.
Charlie Kaufman
#46. The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.
Charlie Kaufman
#47. Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?
Charlie Kaufman
#48. People will say things after a screening that it affects them in a certain way, which is why I don't like to explain what certain things are about. I want them to have that. It limits people's ability to understand something if I say it's "about this." That's happened to us a bunch on this.
Charlie Kaufman
#49. We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.
Charlie Kaufman
#50. I don't have a style. I wouldn't say I have a style as a writer, either. I know people have said "This is what he does," but when I'm writing, I don't think about that. I don't think about a style.
Charlie Kaufman
#51. If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me.
Charlie Kaufman
#52. The only way to do something interesting is not care if you fail.
Charlie Kaufman
#53. I wanted to deal with someone's idea of their relationship.
Charlie Kaufman
#54. The world needs you. It doesn't need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties - these books exist, and they're tempting - but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, 'I don't know,' and being kind.
Charlie Kaufman
#55. CLEMENTINE: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
JOEL: I know.
CLEMENTINE: What do we do?
JOEL: Enjoy it.
Charlie Kaufman
#56. There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.
Charlie Kaufman
#57. Scary is time passing and sickness and dying and regret and isolation and loneliness and relationship problems - as opposed to a guy in a hockey mask, which didn't seem that scary.
Charlie Kaufman
#58. You and I share the same DNA.
Is there anything more lonely than that?
Charlie Kaufman
#59. And also the idea of not making it apparent that it's different from the rest of the film, even though there are visual differences, the audience is supposed to think that they are with him when he wakes up in the morning.
Charlie Kaufman
#60. I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.
Charlie Kaufman
#61. Before you start production, you have characters you have created without actors in mind, then all of a sudden you've got actors. They bring an enormous amount in creating these characters, and creating the dynamics between the characters that you've written.
Charlie Kaufman
#62. I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.
Charlie Kaufman
#63. I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That's what I want to explore. We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't.
Charlie Kaufman
#64. I'm not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.
Charlie Kaufman
#66. I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.
Charlie Kaufman
#67. I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.
Charlie Kaufman
#68. I think directing and writing are very different jobs. Obviously, directing is a more social and managerial job. The other thing about directing is that it's a very, very pragmatic job, and writing isn't.
Charlie Kaufman
#69. To begin ... To begin ... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.
Charlie Kaufman
#71. I just try to be honest, because I think that's part of my job description as a writer.
Charlie Kaufman
#72. I can never watch anything I've been involved in, because I know it, and I know what the making of it was like, and I know what's been cut out and changed. I just know it.
Charlie Kaufman
#73. There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
Charlie Kaufman
#75. We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
Charlie Kaufman
#76. I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.
Charlie Kaufman
#77. When you approach middle age, lots of stuff happens. Your body is aging, you're watching people around you get sick, you're watching people die, your mortality becomes very present at that point in your life.
Charlie Kaufman
#79. I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.
Charlie Kaufman
#80. The sad thing about working on a movie is that you can never see the movie.
Charlie Kaufman
#81. The difference between a movie and a play is that the production you end up with is the production. If a movie that I spent time on turns out to be crap, it's never going to be made again.
Charlie Kaufman
#82. Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don't risk failure, you're never going to do anything that's different from what you've already done or what somebody else has done.
Charlie Kaufman
#83. So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.
Charlie Kaufman
#84. Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.
Charlie Kaufman
#85. I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.
Charlie Kaufman
#86. I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.
Charlie Kaufman
#87. Why didn't I go in? I'm such a chicken. I'm such an idiot. I should have kissed her. I've blown it. I should just go and knock on her door and just kiss her. It would be romantic. It would be something we could someday tell our kids. I'm gonna do that right now.
[drives away]
Charlie Kaufman
#88. I try to present something that is true so I don't further destroy the world with my contribution to it.
Charlie Kaufman
#89. I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
Charlie Kaufman
#90. I'm interested in art, and I think about the process of making art. It's part of my personality, my experience of the world, so it ends up in the movies. It's where my head is.
Charlie Kaufman
#91. I do a lot of things intuitively. I'm not often consciously aware of what I'm doing. It's like in a dream: There's something going on that's powerful but you don't know exactly why.
Charlie Kaufman
#92. The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets.
Charlie Kaufman
#96. I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.
Charlie Kaufman
#97. I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.
Charlie Kaufman
#98. I choose to write characters from the inside because I feel like that's the way I'm gonna get the most honest version of them.
Charlie Kaufman
#99. I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive' ... but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
Charlie Kaufman
#100. And so not only do you have to make that work, you can't really start putting the thing together in any form because some of the shots are very short and obviously many of them take so long, you're waiting months and months and months before you can see if it's going to be working emotionally.
Charlie Kaufman
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