Top 35 Spike Jonze Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

— Spike Jonze

Featured in: Past Quotes

2. “Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.”

— Spike Jonze

3. “I like naps. I don’t drink coffee.”

— Spike Jonze

4. “If you compromise what you’re trying to do just a little bit, you’ll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you’re suddenly really far away from where you’re trying to go.”

— Spike Jonze

5. “The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions – of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.”

— Spike Jonze

6. “Even in this world where you’re getting everything you need and having this nice life, there’s still loneliness and longing and disconnection.”

— Spike Jonze

7. “Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.”

— Spike Jonze

8. “I don’t understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.”

— Spike Jonze

9. “Be willing to get fired for a good idea.”

— Spike Jonze

10. “I just want to make whatever is exciting.”

— Spike Jonze

11. “I think because I’m not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.”

— Spike Jonze

12. “Sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m ever gonna feel and from here on out I’m not going to feel anything new – just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.”

— Spike Jonze

13. “I think, as you’re growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you’re an adult. You’re ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don’t feel things more as we get older.”

— Spike Jonze

14. “Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.”

— Spike Jonze

15. “The invention of the iPod changes how you use music. Suddenly you have music everywhere.”

— Spike Jonze

16. “If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.”

— Spike Jonze

17. “As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.”

— Spike Jonze

18. “I am better at math than spelling.”

— Spike Jonze

19. “Don’t differentiate between ‘This is a job’ and ‘This is what I’m doing for fun.’ It’s all simultaneous.”

— Spike Jonze

20. “If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I’m very proud of myself.”

— Spike Jonze

21. “I feel like everything I make is personal to me.”

— Spike Jonze

22. “On everything I do I’m always taking someone’s money, whether it’s a movie studio or a record label. Somebody’s paying for it, and I’m always respectful of that. But I’m never going to compromise.”

— Spike Jonze

23. “We’ll take care for each other, and we’ll all sleep together in a real pile.”

— Spike Jonze

24. “I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They’re drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they’re not tortured about it.”

— Spike Jonze

25. “I like hiring people based on a feeling – this person gets it – rather than what they’ve done in the past.”

— Spike Jonze

26. “You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.”

— Spike Jonze

27. “I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.”

— Spike Jonze

28. “You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.”

— Spike Jonze

29. “Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It’s very flimsy.”

— Spike Jonze

30. “I’m not one to intellectualize why I did something.”

— Spike Jonze

31. “I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.”

— Spike Jonze

32. “Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don’t think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.”

— Spike Jonze

33. “I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I’m definitely aware of that. I’m also excited about it.”

— Spike Jonze

34. “Getting to work on the thing that you’re always thinking about anyways is like the biggest – that’s the goal.”

— Spike Jonze

35. “Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.”

— Spike Jonze

36. “What the world is like from a nine-year-old’s point of view? My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you’ve got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions.”

— Spike Jonze

37. “When you’re talking about the idea of loving your ex, and being able to hold on to that amidst all the other feelings of being heartbroken or sad or missing something that’s gone – something dies when a relationship ends. It is a death because that thing that was the two of you together was alive and now it won’t be and the only two people who really knew that thing was alive are the two of you. No one else knows.”

— Spike Jonze