Charlie Kaufman Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Encouraging, Courage, Failure

  70 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Smart, Party

  "Screenwriters' Lecture: Charlie Kaufman". BAFTA Lecture, www.bafta.org. September 30, 2011.

  70 Copy quote

• 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

  Lonely, Writing, Years

  "Screenwriters' Lecture: Charlie Kaufman". Speech for BAFTA, www.bafta.org. 30 September 2011.

  48 Copy quote

• The only way to do something interesting is not care if you fail.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Interesting, Care, Way

  6 Copy quote

• You are what you love. Not what loves you.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Love You, Adaptation, What You Love

  Charlie Kaufman (2001*). “Adaptation: Screenplay”

  65 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, People, Expectations

  50 Copy quote

• Writing is a journey into the unknown.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Writing, Journey, Adaptation

  Charlie Kaufman (2001*). “Adaptation: Screenplay”

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Regret, Lying, Passionate

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, People, Giving

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Writing, Thinking

  39 Copy quote

• Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Thinking, Complicated

  Synecdoche, New York, www.imdb.com. 2008.

  15 Copy quote

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

  Charlie Kaufman

  Clue, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won't be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Believe, People, Interesting

  "Screenwriters' Lecture: Charlie Kaufman". BAFTA Lecture, www.bafta.org. September 30, 2011.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Distance, Writing, Emotional

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 22, 2008.

  19 Copy quote

• The end is built into the beginning.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Chaos, Ends, Built

  Charlie Kaufman (2008). “Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script”, Newmarket Press

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Stories, World

  Charlie Kaufman (2008). “Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script”, Newmarket Press

  16 Copy quote

• I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Mind

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Generosity, Creative, Way

  Screenwriters' Lecture, www.bafta.org. September 30, 2011.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, People, Confusion

  "Charlie Kaufman" by Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. October 22, 2008.

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Knowing, Dying

  "Synecdoche, New York". www.imdb.com. 2008.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Charlie Kaufman

  Thinking, People, Giving

  "Being Charlie Kaufman". Interview with Michael Sragow, www.salon.com. November 11, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Hurt, Hate, Ocean

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Thinking, Creative

  8 Copy quote

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

  Charlie Kaufman

  Mean, Worry, Badges

  16 Copy quote

• When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  "Exploring Things: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson On 'Anomalisa'". Interview with Brian Tallerico, www.rogerebert.com. December 29, 2015.

  11 Copy quote

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