Charlie Kaufman Quotes & Sayings

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

If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me. — Charlie Kaufman

I really don't have any solutions and I don't like movies that do. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

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

Do not simplify. Do not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure. — Charlie Kaufman

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive. — Charlie Kaufman

There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't. — Charlie Kaufman

It's good when someone comes to a book or a movie and interacts with it. It's the difference between an illustration and a painting. An illustration serves a specific purpose, and a painting is something you can immerse yourself in. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

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

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

Meet me in Montauk... — Charlie Kaufman

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take. — Charlie Kaufman

I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. I prefer it when people say nice things, but if they say not-nice things or things that are critical, I'm open to it and I accept it. I mean, I have to live with it. But I do think there's a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you're a person with an opinion. I think it's almost like a power grab. — Charlie Kaufman

You've been a part of me forever. Don't you know that? I breathe your name in every exhalation. — Charlie Kaufman

I just try to be honest, because I think that's part of my job description as a writer. — Charlie Kaufman

I like actors - I used to be one. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

Yeah, once we decided to use that replacement animation, and the seams are a function of that animation, and other movies paint those out, we decided we wanted to keep the presence of the animation and the type of animation that it was rather than make it look polished. It created a kind of vulnerability, I think. — Charlie Kaufman

I have a lot of health anxiety. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write. — Charlie Kaufman

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

Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention? — Charlie Kaufman

She was nice. Nice is good. — Charlie Kaufman

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing. — Charlie Kaufman

There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there's loss. Everything involves loss; every relationship ends in one way or another. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me. — Charlie Kaufman

I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me. — Charlie Kaufman

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain. — Charlie Kaufman

The end is built into the beginning. — Charlie Kaufman

I'm not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life. — Charlie Kaufman

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

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it. — Charlie Kaufman

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

I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there. — Charlie Kaufman

We're all subjective beings and trapped in our own realities and our own biographical stories and physical bodies and our histories - and that's the only way we can experience the world. — Charlie Kaufman

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

From my vantage point in writing a story, I can't and don't and have no interest in thinking about the level of sophistication of the audience. I can only think about what interests me, and maybe what I would want to see if I were watching the movie. To me, that's the key to writing something that's not pandering. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

You get a kind of surreal feeling and also it allows you to focus on the things we want you to focus on in a new way - the stuff that's very small and mundane that happens in a person's life when they're in a hotel room. There's more interest because you're seeing a puppet do things that you're very familiar with that you might not notice if it was a human doing it. — Charlie Kaufman

I was trying to figure out what a memory feels like. — Charlie Kaufman

I have a tendency to hire people who tend to be unattractive to the studios. Maybe this is a bad idea. — Charlie Kaufman

I don't think the world objectively exists the way we think it exists. There's a constant sort of storytelling process. — Charlie Kaufman

I try to present something that is true so I don't further destroy the world with my contribution to it. — Charlie Kaufman

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

I'm in my mind a lot. I live there. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

Writing is a journey into the unknown. — Charlie Kaufman

Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading. — Charlie Kaufman

The sad thing about working on a movie is that you can never see the movie. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

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

I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking. — Charlie Kaufman

I'm Jewish, and my family is Jewish. I was very interested in Woody Allen when I was growing up, but I don't think of myself as a Jewish writer. I'm more from suburbia, American suburbia. I'm more from the '70s than I am from Judaism. — Charlie Kaufman

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

I want to create situations that give people something to think about. — Charlie Kaufman

I want to do my own thing, and I'm trying to get closer to realizing that as a filmmaker. — Charlie Kaufman

I like titles that are a little difficult, because it's kind of counterintuitive. — Charlie Kaufman

Clem: Hide me somewhere deeper, somewhere really buried.
Joel: Where?
Clem: Hide me in your humiliation. — Charlie Kaufman

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

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays. — Charlie Kaufman

I feel like I want to keep moving toward idiosyncracy. Personal, personal, personal. — Charlie Kaufman

Story ideas, but it's also musing on stuff that I'm thinking about. This leads me to this and this leads me to this. They're kind of random and haphazard. Often I can't find anything. Somehow, by doing that, even though I don't necessarily refer to them in a specific way, I have some sort of architecture in my head. — Charlie Kaufman

You're dealing with the body, and you're dealing with bodily functions. We romanticize everything about people in movies. — Charlie Kaufman

CLAIRE
I used to be a baby!

CADAN
I'm sorry. — Charlie Kaufman

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

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. — Charlie Kaufman

I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process. — Charlie Kaufman

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

You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

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

I'm moving - as a person and as a writer - through time. I'm a different age. I'm thinking about different things. I have different life experiences. I'm trying to get closer to being honest. And by closer I mean that at different ages I have different ideas of what the truth is, and at any point I'm trying to express that at that moment in time. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

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

I graduated from college in 1980. — Charlie Kaufman

Sand is overrated. It's just tiny little rocks. — Charlie Kaufman

I wanted to deal with someone's idea of their relationship. — Charlie Kaufman

Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won't be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can't help but be that. But more importantly, if you're honest about who you are, you'll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. — Charlie Kaufman

I have ideas written down some places, but usually I can't find them. I'm not very organized. — Charlie Kaufman

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

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it. — Charlie Kaufman

My point of view comes more from the literature I've read and the comedy of the era. When I was a kid, coming across National Lampoon Magazine, that was a big thing. I suddenly felt like there were other people that felt the way I did, and there was a way of expressing and communicating this worldview. — Charlie Kaufman

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

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

I think everything I do is based on my experience in the world in one way or another. — Charlie Kaufman