Top 120 Charlie Kaufman Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “She was nice. Nice is good.”

— Charlie Kaufman

53. “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

54. “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

55. “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

56. “If you ever got me, you wouldn’t have a clue what to do with me.”

— Charlie Kaufman

57. “I really don’t have any solutions and I don’t like movies that do.”

— Charlie Kaufman

58. “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

59. “As a kid, I had a background in theater.”

— Charlie Kaufman

60. “I don’t think I’ve had a lonely moment in my life.”

— Charlie Kaufman

61. “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.”

— Charlie Kaufman

62. “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

63. “You’re dealing with the body, and you’re dealing with bodily functions. We romanticize everything about people in movies.”

— Charlie Kaufman

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “I was trying to figure out what a memory feels like.”

— Charlie Kaufman

68. “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

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

— Charlie Kaufman

70. “There is truth and there are lies, and art always tells the truth, even when it’s lying.”

— Charlie Kaufman

71. “If I read something somebody wrote 300 years ago, and it’s me, what I’m going through now in my head, it sends chills down my spine, and I feel like that’s what I want to be able to offer – that if I offer myself, there’s a chance somebody else will feel connected.”

— Charlie Kaufman

72. “I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.”

— Charlie Kaufman

73. “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

74. “The sad thing about working on a movie is that you can never see the movie.”

— Charlie Kaufman

75. “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

76. “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

77. “Sometimes I feel my thoughts are not my own, that I am thinking wrong things, stupid things, ridiculous things, for the amusement of an unseen audience.”

— Charlie Kaufman

78. “I’m not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.”

— Charlie Kaufman

79. “I do throw out a lot of ideas, and I forget completely about them.”

— Charlie Kaufman

80. “My time on the set is the least of my involvement. Most of my time is in pre-production and post-production.”

— Charlie Kaufman

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

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

— Charlie Kaufman

90. “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

91. “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

92. “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

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

— Charlie Kaufman

94. “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

95. “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

96. “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

97. “Sometimes I don’t like the books that I’m reading.”

— Charlie Kaufman

98. “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

99. “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

100. “I know that as a very young child, I was afraid of death. Many children become aware of the notion of death early and it can be a very troubling thing. We’re all in this continuum: I’m this age now, and if I live long enough I’ll be that age. I was 20 once, I was 10, I was 4. People who are 20 now will be 50 one day. They don’t know that! They know it in the abstract, but they don’t know it. I’d like them to know it, because I think it gives you compassion.”

— Charlie Kaufman