When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

Charlie Kaufman

Categorized in : Thinking Years Writing

The world needs you. It doesn't need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties - these books exist, and they're tempting - but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, 'I don't know,' and being kind.

Charlie Kaufman

smart party real

Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done.

Charlie Kaufman

encouraging failure courage

You are what you love. Not what loves you.

Charlie Kaufman

what-you-love adaptation love-you

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.

Charlie Kaufman

expectations people thinking

Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that. But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope.

Charlie Kaufman

lonely writing years

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.

Charlie Kaufman

real writing thinking

The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.

Charlie Kaufman

artist giving people

The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets.

Charlie Kaufman

passionate regret lying

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

Charlie Kaufman

keep-moving want moving

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.

Charlie Kaufman

confusion writing people

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?

Charlie Kaufman

distance emotional writing

Do not simplify. Do not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure.

Charlie Kaufman

badges worry mean

I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.

Charlie Kaufman

mind

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

Charlie Kaufman

know-how writing way

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

hate ocean hurt

The end is built into the beginning.

Charlie Kaufman

chaos built ends

There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.

Charlie Kaufman

stories people world

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

stories reality world

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.

Charlie Kaufman

complicated thinking

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

Charlie Kaufman

adaptation dna lonely