Quotes By 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.

I have a lot of health anxiety.

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.

As a kid, I had a background in theater.

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

I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.

I like actors - I used to be one.

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

I graduated from college in 1980.

I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.

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

I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.

I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.

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.

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?

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