Charlie Kaufman Quotes - Page 2

I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.

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

I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. I prefer it when people say nice things, but if they say not-nice things or things that are critical, I'm open to it and I accept it. I mean, I have to live with it. But I do think there's a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you're a person with an opinion. I think it's almost like a power grab.

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.

I think directing and writing are very different jobs. Obviously, directing is a more social and managerial job. The other thing about directing is that it's a very, very pragmatic job, and writing isn't.

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.

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

There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there's loss. Everything involves loss; every relationship ends in one way or another.

You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?

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.

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.

There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.

Story ideas, but it's also musing on stuff that I'm thinking about. This leads me to this and this leads me to this. They're kind of random and haphazard. Often I can't find anything. Somehow, by doing that, even though I don't necessarily refer to them in a specific way, I have some sort of architecture in my head.

From my vantage point in writing a story, I can't and don't and have no interest in thinking about the level of sophistication of the audience. I can only think about what interests me, and maybe what I would want to see if I were watching the movie. To me, that's the key to writing something that's not pandering.

David Lynch is very important to me, and he does dreamlike movies, but my dreams are not like David Lynch's dreams. I have no interest in copying anybody's work. It would never occur to me to want this to look like someone else's thing.

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.

There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.

I do have, at different times, a certain kind of self-consciousness in the world, an insecurity.

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

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon. Joel: I know. Clementine: What do we do? Joel: Enjoy it.

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

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

I have a lot of anxiety about medical things for example. I don't think I'm particularly good at it, but I'd had the practice when I went into shooting Synecdoche. It can be somewhat gratifying, too, because I don't have that relationship with other adults where I need to comfort them or they come to me for that.

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

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