Charlie Kaufman Quotes

As you get older, you get stuck in your ways; just as you become stiffer physically, you also become stiffer mentally and more narrow-minded unless you make a conscious effort to keep yourself flexible.

It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself.

I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

I just get silly inside my head and I start to think about something and in my head I start twisting it around, contorting it and envisioning it in different ways.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

The broader the chess player you are, the easier it is to be competitive, and the same seems to be true of mathematics - if you can find links between different branches of mathematics, it can help you resolve problems. In both mathematics and chess, you study existing theory and use that to go forward.

I am, as are most writers, just hugely obsessive, and so are many of my closest friends, who tend to be writers or scientists. It's a trait of human nature that I'm particularly in touch with. So I tend to project it onto my characters.

I once missed an appointment because I left my house, I locked the door. And then I thought, like anybody else, you know, 'I don't think I locked the door.' I just kept going back to the door. And I couldn't stop myself from checking and checking.

We live on the circumference of a hollow circle. We draw the circumference, like spiders, out of ourselves: it is all criticism of criticism.

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

My mind tends to operate a bit like a radar. I don't find it hard to switch off.

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one.

I was always incredibly obsessed with germs and cleaning and taking shower after shower after shower. Even when I was very young, I wouldn't tie my shoelaces because they had touched the ground. I had continuous repetitive thoughts that I couldn't get past. As a child, my mind was a lot busier than I was.

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

I'll let myself obsess over things.

No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions.

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

The point is that there are challenges within techniques. When you differentiate in technique, you challenge yourself; you ask yourself the same question in a new way.

I guess different brains work in different ways.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached.

I'm big on watching film, and sometimes it hurts myself because I over-calculate things, or I overthink sometimes.

We find that the more you talk about it, the more you head off any spontaneous inspiration that might happen.

I get extremely detail-oriented. In my most stressed-out days, I get way more focused on those details than anyone should be.