Charlie Kaufman Quotes

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays. It's more that I wanted to see what it would be like if I didn't have to collaborate with anybody, to have a sense of purity of the thing from beginning to end. I liked doing it. It's really different from writing. Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

To make personal movies that you are the author of, is quite a difficult thing. It takes a lot of stamina.

If you write, produce and direct, you own things and see them through to the end.

What I do is draw but if you make an animated feature obviously it takes a whole team of people, and Zippy is my work. I felt that turning it over to a team of people would be wrong.

I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.

You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter, you are a bit down the ladder.

That's what George wrote! He wrote it. Why change it? There was this European company that I was speaking about awhile ago - course, didn't nobody know what Porgy was.

If you write your own material and perform your own material, then nobody can really expose it because if you keep your secrets close to yourself, then nobody can really expose you.

I want to be a genuine artist who has a say in what I do.

I try to just make what I want to make or what I would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much.

I avoid watching other people's versions of films or plays that I work on.

I make pop music, but I do it on my own terms. I'll never play the game, so to speak, just for success. I'll always follow my heart and make the music I want to make.