Charlie Kaufman Quotes

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

Charlie Kaufman

• Trying

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Quotes to Explore

• I'm constantly trying to find something that's different from me, whereas some actors do the same thing, again and again. That's not for me.

  

  Aaron Johnson
  • Different
  • Trying
  • Me

• About the most exciting thing a baby can do is burp - I've spent hours of my life holding a baby on my shoulder and patting its back, trying to loosen up a burp. Burping was probably invented to give the father something positive to do, since our chests are not equipped to allow us to do much else.

  

  W. Bruce Cameron
  • Life
  • Up
  • Trying

• The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • People
  • Losing
  • Despair

• If I hadn't spent many years trying to be as compassionate as Mother Teresa, as positive a thinker as W. Clement Stone, as prolific a writer as Stephen King, and as good a speaker as many of the legends I have studied, I would not be as successful as I am today.

  

  Jack Canfield
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Mother

• Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.

  

  F. Murray Abraham
  • Trying
  • Man
  • English

• Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better!

  

  Eddie Marsan
  • Good
  • Men
  • Trying

• With sitcom writing, you're trying to write stories.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Writing
  • Trying
  • You

• If you're trying to understand why it is that certain things happen in Sacramento and certain things don't, at the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of incentives: We do what we're incentivized to do.

  

  Gavin Newsom
  • Trying
  • Why
  • Day

• You take so much on as a therapist: you just sit there and listen to people talk with you, and you're trying to help people, and it can be draining.

  

  Samira Wiley
  • People
  • Trying
  • Help

• If we're going to go really deep, we're all trying to live forever. My music is my way of doing that.

  

  Sam Smith
  • Music
  • Live
  • Trying

• I'm not trying to be the next Dave Grohl or Phil Collins.

  

  Taylor Hawkins Foo Fighters
  • Trying
  • Next
  • Dave

• You're trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a 'memory before the game. I don't know if you'd call it visualising or dreaming, but I've always done it, my whole life.

  

  Wayne Rooney
  • Life
  • Trying
  • Done

• It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.

  

  Wangari Maathai
  • People
  • Good
  • Men

• A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.

  

  B. F. Skinner
  • Real
  • Trying
  • May

• Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Bad

• There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few.

  

  Victor Papanek
  • Design
  • More
  • Industrial

• I get in trouble when I say things like, 'I'm attracted to violence.' I was a pretty angry kid, and I got into military history largely as a way to vent my own anger. As I got older it narrowed down to a more specific focus on individual violence. I'm just trying to understand where it came from.

  

  Caleb Carr
  • Trying
  • History
  • Pretty

• When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow some of those first impressions or whether to abandon them.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Trying
  • Down
  • Journal

• Every time I step onto the field, whether people like it or not, I'm not trying to play dirty - I'm just playing tough.

  

  Carli Lloyd
  • People
  • Time
  • Trying

• The more you know about somebody's back story, the deeper you can delve into that well, and the more your comedic choices resonate full-body instead of just being quick, quippy one-liners that are just like a bunch of people trying to be clever. Because after a while, cleverness is just really obnoxious!

  

  Constance Wu
  • People
  • Trying
  • Choices

• In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

  

  Bill Frisell
  • Up
  • Time
  • Trying

• ...the really damned not only like Hell, they feel loyal to it...

  

  Randall Jarrell

• We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

  

  Charlie Kaufman
  • Trying