Author

We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.

From Charlie Kaufman

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.

From Charlie Kaufman

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

From Charlie Kaufman

Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.

From Charlie Kaufman

I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.

From Charlie Kaufman

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?

From Charlie Kaufman

You are what you love. Not what loves you.

From Charlie Kaufman

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.

From Charlie Kaufman

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

From Charlie Kaufman

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.

From Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman

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