Charlie Kaufman Quotes

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

You may or may not like 'Baaz.' But you will definitely say I have done something different.

This is my real concern: to give each film a unique individuality.

I knew Spike Jonze would do something really interesting with it.

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.

I would love to have been a painter in the tradition of the surrealist painters who I admire so much.

I'm not the average artist.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

As soon as someone like me or David Lynch pops up everyone says hallelujah, how weird.

I have to say, Alejandro Colucci is amazing. I had seen his work several times before I started making the connection between the art and the person making it, and when I heard that he was going to work on the cover for 'Seven Forges,' that connection was not yet cemented.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

Crumb was such an influence on me. He's such a visionary, such a great artist, that he so shaped my artistic sensibilities on a certain level that I do owe everything to him. The way I see the world is largely changed by him.

If you look at any 15 pieces of mine, nobody does a piece like them. Totally new techniques. All the jugglers are stealing from me and claiming that they've done it.

I have many musical inspirations, but I would really love to just be me. My very own artist.

I think this, I think basically I'm not interested in people following my work or making work like my work.

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it.

Stephen Frears is brilliant and has made movies that inspired me for my whole life.

Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.

There's only a certain number of movies I'm going to get made, and it's important to me that they each be original somehow.

Films should involve a director's idiosyncrasies as much as possible I think.

The hardest part of being an artist is discovering what it is you do differently.

You should be able to do you. That's what differentiates an artist from a singer.

I want to make every film different from my previous one.

I'm glad Wu-Tang was able to inspire other producers and artists, but I would never want to be erased or removed.