Charlie Kaufman Quotes

I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and what happens to me, and from things I read.

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.

There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.

I've actually always started with what feels most natural. Which is, the people who surround me in my daily life. So, the first show I ever wrote, which is called 'Surface Transit,' was based in part on people I knew from my family. Co-workers, ex-boyfriends. All of that kind of thing.

When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world.

Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell stories about them.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

We love to start from a real place, whether it's us or our friends or working on a story from a writer's friend.

When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

Most of my characters are an amalgamation of people that I've met, my family, or myself. Being a writer, you can draw only from what you know. I am lucky to have really rich and interesting people in my family for, you know, interesting family nights and great characters.

I take inspiration from my own experiences and from other people's experiences.

Sometimes I make up songs, and they're just strictly fiction. Other times, I draw on things that have happened in my life or friends, women, all sorts of things.

A lot of things that I write about have happened to people around me, if not necessarily to me or in the organizations I've worked in. Having said that, it's fiction and has a lot to do with my imagination and creativity.

Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know.

All the stories I write come from someone I've met or some anecdote I've heard.

A lot of 'Time' was actually about a friend's relationship and me seeing what she went through and how she felt.

I'm a very observational storyteller, and I'm always relational - a lot of stories stem from relationships, whether it's me with my husband, me with my mom or my siblings.