Top 80 Noah Baumbach Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Being funny, in some ways, is about being connected to psychology.”

— Noah Baumbach

2. “It’s kind of major, learning to drive. I feel like it kicked up other stuff in my life.”

— Noah Baumbach

3. “We all have these notions of cool that come about at different points in our lives, and it’s interesting in how it evolves or doesn’t evolve in different people.”

— Noah Baumbach

4. “I live in Manhattan now, because, in a way, it was my fantasy.”

— Noah Baumbach

5. “I’m interested in the way major events don’t necessarily announce themselves as major events. They’re often little things – the drip, drip of life that changes people or affects people.”

— Noah Baumbach

6. “I’ve always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.”

— Noah Baumbach

7. “I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves – to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They’re testing boundaries, and I think that’s healthy.”

— Noah Baumbach

8. “I was late to the Knicks. My dad was a big fan. But I first started watching baseball; I became a Red Sox fan. My dad was a Mets fan. I wanted to have my own team and league.”

— Noah Baumbach

9. “I think all my movies are about transitions to some degree.”

— Noah Baumbach

10. “The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.”

— Noah Baumbach

11. “We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.”

— Noah Baumbach

12. “I think it’s always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.”

— Noah Baumbach

13. “I wouldn’t say ‘Frances Ha’ is autobiographical, but it’s definitely very personal.”

— Noah Baumbach

14. “As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I’m a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.”

— Noah Baumbach

15. “Wes Anderson’s films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them.”

— Noah Baumbach

16. “When you’re around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you’d be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.”

— Noah Baumbach

17. “When you find yourself on the Internet when you’re supposed to be writing, you’ve already lost. It’s even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.”

— Noah Baumbach

18. “I guess I’m interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with huge blind spots in terms of their own behavior.”

— Noah Baumbach

19. “I used a video camera, and shot on film cameras at school and stuff, but I had a lot more training as a writer. I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I’ve done that my whole life.”

— Noah Baumbach

20. “It’s nice being friends over a period of time with people whose music you like so much, or other filmmakers, seeing people change, go through trials.”

— Noah Baumbach

21. “I’m good with a grill. I like to make cheeseburgers – I once read in a David Goodis crime novel that you’re only supposed to flip a burger once.”

— Noah Baumbach

22. “I like to have memories of a place. It brings something extra. I’m not even sure what it is. I mean, it’s the same part of it as I like using friends in small parts or people I know or my doorman.”

— Noah Baumbach

23. “It’s near impossible to make a movie in black and white in the system.”

— Noah Baumbach

24. “I grew up in the heat of ’70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.”

— Noah Baumbach

25. “There’s something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don’t know what their reaction will be.”

— Noah Baumbach

26. “My dad was a great movie companion. He wouldn’t diminish ‘The Jerk.’ If I liked it, he liked it. He could see it through my eyes.”

— Noah Baumbach

27. “I’m sure I’ve said some pretty bad pick-up lines.”

— Noah Baumbach

28. “I watch movies all the time, so it’s hard to pick certain specific directors that have inspired me in the aggregate.”

— Noah Baumbach

29. “There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It’s still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn’t get it.”

— Noah Baumbach

30. “I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I’ve done that my whole life.”

— Noah Baumbach

31. “It’s always really special to be at the New York Film Festival, and always a real privilege.”

— Noah Baumbach

32. “Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.”

— Noah Baumbach

33. “A film set becomes its own family anyway, and all family dynamics come out during a shoot. The trick is hiring people who know how to handle that.”

— Noah Baumbach

34. “I’m curious how people build up the codes that they live their life by, and how they come to think that that’s the best way for them to function.”

— Noah Baumbach

35. “I call my wife and tell her I’m going to sleep at the lab. She reminds me that she left me a week ago. Louis tries to crack me up by pantomiming humping a chimp through the cage.”

— Noah Baumbach

36. “I didn’t train in directing; I talk to actors the way I talk to anybody.”

— Noah Baumbach

37. “Being articulate, my parents could make anything sound reasonable.”

— Noah Baumbach

38. “I always viewed life as material for a movie.”

— Noah Baumbach

39. “I guess I probably took New York for granted. Growing up, playing in the street, going down to the Avenue to the record store and to the grocery store and stuff like that.”

— Noah Baumbach

40. “I like the way corduroys feel. I like the sort of jean aspect of corduroys, but also the texture of them. They probably remind me of my childhood, too, I think. I wore cords, and my dad had a corduroy jacket.”

— Noah Baumbach

41. “Music is like color or acting or whatever. It’s really something I think about from the beginning. Not that I always know exactly what I’m going to use, but I don’t see it as something like, “Let’s find some songs now!” after we have a finished film.”

— Noah Baumbach

42. “I’m always looking for overlooked post-Dylan singer-songwriter records from the ’70s.”

— Noah Baumbach

43. “I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it’s your friend.”

— Noah Baumbach

44. “When I was a kid, I would fantasize about my own funeral.”

— Noah Baumbach

45. “When I meet certain filmmakers, sometimes you sit down and you do have some kind of shorthand. It can be fun to see them as someone who has been through similar experiences, but also as someone who just loves film. You can talk with them about films in a way that feels really free.”

— Noah Baumbach

46. “I made two movies very young, and then I had trouble getting a movie made, and so – which was both, I think, a plus and a minus. It was a minus because it made me unhappy.”

— Noah Baumbach

47. “That’s the nice thing about collaborating with someone: Your work becomes a conversation.”

— Noah Baumbach

48. “I try to write ‘and it’s all very funny’ after each scene description so that the reader can imagine the movie in their head.”

— Noah Baumbach

49. “You can be aware that something is idiosyncratic, and give it to a character, but keep doing it.”

— Noah Baumbach

50. “There’s always some generational-guys-hanging-out movie that is made every few years, I think, and some of them are great.”

— Noah Baumbach