Antkind Quotes

“Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It’s the Christopher Nolan of coffee.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Sometimes I feel my thoughts are not my own, that I am thinking wrong things, stupid things, ridiculous things, for the amusement of an unseen audience.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“A genius must sometimes be a racist if we are to hope for elucidation. History is generously peppered with geniuses who despised the Jews, who dismissed the blacks, who objectified women. Are we to bury their great works because of this? The answer is a resounding no, we are not to. We are, all of us, human. We are, all of us, imperfect. Prejudice is evolutionarily implanted in our genes. We need to know The Tiger is a dangerous animal. We need not know that all tigers are not. Identifying the personalities of individual tigers does not serve our need to survive. Granted, it might make us more enlightened individuals and friends with some tigers, and I am all for that. I applaud that, but one must recognize that there is a tribal instinct in humans and it is at its base an instinct for survival. So accept that, mourn it, decry it, rail against it, but recognize it is a very human trait and have patience with it. Have compassion. Thank you and good night.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“picture her naked but with the clown makeup on, and instantly I realize a new fetish has been born. My synaptic train has a new stop: Clowntown.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“There are rumors of rats down here as big as German shepherds, the people not the dogs.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Compare this to any mess written by Charlie Kaufman.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Comedy is a lie, too, of course. It’s a defense, an aggression. It is a thing created to separate, to say, “I am not like this.” It is Godlike in its judgment and, by definition, the antithesis of empathy. Comedy sits on its throne and states: You are ridiculous. You are pathetic. You are stupid. Your pain amuses me. Most important, I am not you. Even comedy directed at the self, the stand-ups, the Woody Allens of the world, is performed as an act of defense: I am in on the joke that is me, therefore the joke is not me.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“I am the proud owner of a gaping hole in my soul.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Most of us are invisible," he said. "We live our lives unrecorded.
When we die, it's soon as if we have never lived. But we are not without consequence, because, of course, the world does not function without us. We have jobs. We support economies. We take care of children and the elderly. We are kind to someone. We murder.
The existence of us, the unseen people, must be acknowledged, but the dilemma is that once acknowledged, we are no longer truly those same unseen people. Your Dardenne brothers, your De Sicas, your Satyajit Rays are honorable, talented filmmakers, decent and, I sus-pect, caring, but the work they do is wrongheaded. Once the Unseen are seen, they are no longer Unseen. These men have perpetuated a fiction. I have struggled with this issue, and my solution is to build and animate the world outside the view of my cam-era. These characters exist and are as carefully animated as those seen in the film. They are just forever out of view.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“The internet. Everything one needs at one's fingertips. There have been no doubt studies demonstrating how this has affected people's memories in the negative. I will have to look those up online.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“I guess the truth is I crave humiliation. What is ironic or at least curious is that in my actual life, humiliation is the thing I most fear and I most experience. Yet I am not happy. Why?”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“The only moment that we exist is the moment we inhabit.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Perhaps you are repulsed by me. Well, perhaps you are the one with the problem, not I. Perhaps you are the repulsive one. Perhaps you have never cared enough about anything in your life to weep at its loss. If that is the case, it is I who pity you. You will go through your brutish existence experiencing the small pleasures of taking things that are not yours, going places you are not welcome, sticking your elbow into the legally purchased space of another. Then you will die. Congratulations: That is your life. I hope you are happy with it. I hope you don’t regret, on your deathbed, that you never felt love, or joy, or loss. Yes, loss. There is a profound sweet melancholy in the experience of loss. It is the most delectable and pungent spice on the spice rack of life. Too bad you won’t taste it, buddy. I guess it doesn’t go with burgers and beer.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Nothing does anything for me anymore.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Boredom is the domain of the dullard.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“start. It occurs to me that both in my dreams and in my waking life there exists the same question: What now? Something happens or nothing happens, and either way, I have to decide what to do next. There is no end to it. Well, no, there is one end to it, and that revelation leads me to this conclusion: “What now?” is the definition of life.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“The next morning, I play the recording for Ocky. It is regular Friends. Monica makes a pie.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“When one considers the multitude of unsung of every race, ethnicity, gender, perhaps toiling away in obscurity, their work thrown out after their deaths by philistine relatives and vulgarian landlords, one must weep. And one does.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“If we are witnesses without memory, we are not witnesses at all. A hollow cylinder through which the wind blows will not remember the whistle it produces.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“I turn to van Gogh. “Have you seen that Dr. Who episode?” “Which one?” “The one with you in it?” “No! That’s crazy. Really? I’m in it? Is it any good? I love that show.” “You should see it. It’s a travesty. I think you’d be outraged.” “Oh no. Why?” “It has the actor playing you weeping with joy at the crass commercialization of your art, at your posthumous popularity, at the idea that now your paintings are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“A stab wound less than three millimeters deep is legal and even encouraged. We cannot help you unless a crime has been committed. Fourteen millimeters or more.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Clown Laurie,” I begin, “the cosmos exists on credit! It is like a debenture, a draft for material and energy which must be repaid immediately, because its existence is the purest one hundred percent liability both in terms of energy and in terms of material. Then, just what does the cosmologist do? With the help of physicist friends he builds a great ‘chronogun’ which fires one single electron backward ‘against the tide’ in the flow of time. That electron, transformed into a positron as a result of its motion ‘against the grain’ of time, goes speeding through time, and in the course of this journey acquires more and more energy. Finally, at the point where it ‘leaps out’ of the cosmos, i.e., in a place in which there had as yet been no cosmos, all the terrible energies it has acquired are released in that tremendously powerful explosion which brings about the universe! In this manner the debt is paid off. At the same time, thanks to the largest possible ‘causal circle,’ the existence of the cosmos is authenticated, and a person turns out to be the actual creator of that very universe!”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“The jokes. The jokes. The fucking endless jokes.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Давайте визнаємо: тварини галасують. Вони потребують уваги. Вони шумлять голосніше, ніж овочі, які, своєю чергою, шумлять голосніше, ніж мінерали. Отже, тварини, особливо люди, від природи схильні до драматизації. Вони нічим не важливіші за овочі, але вірять, що важливіші. Це знають усі, хто читав Ліннея. Про це каже вже сама класифікація. Немає жодної ієрархії. Усі елементи рівні, абсолютно рівні. Найпростіша аналогія: спробуйте визначити, яка частина м'яча найважливіша. Відповіді бути не може, бо питання не має сенсу. Можна подумати, це несправедливо, що люди отримують найбільшу увагу. Що крикуни винагороджуються. Що завжди змащують насамперед скрипуче колесо. Але потім спитайте себе: несправедливо по відношенню до кого? Люди — та сама частина м'яча, яка отримує увагу. Люди — та частина м'яча, яка б'ється об землю, але деформується увесь м'яч повністю.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Комедія не інакше як філософське, концептуальне явище. Щось здається смішним, тому що є неправильним. Неправильність можна оцінити тільки при розвиненому відчутті правильності. Щоб можна було порушувати очікування. Собака не думає, що людина, яка послизнулась на банановій шкірці, — це смішно, бо собака не має очікування, що людина не повинна послизатися на банановій шкірці.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Думаю про шини, про те, що вони круглі, з порожнечею в центрі. Це схоже на зниклий фільм. І все ж таки порожнеча в центрі шини може бути корисною; вона дозволяє натягнути шину на колесо, а це дозволяє колесу обертатися навколо осі, що дозволяє авту рухатися вперед. Це дає мені якусь надію. Можливо, зниклий фільм дозволить рухатися вперед. Можливо, зниклий фільм — це порожнеча у центрі шини мого мозку.

Нам потрібно розглянути втрату у всіх проявах, чи не так? Втрата відносин, втрата любові, втрата влади, втрата пам'яті, втрата статусу та паніка після цього. Нам треба змиритися з тим, що втрата є базовим елементом буття. Елемент відсутності. Все буде втрачено. «Всі ці миті зникнуть у часі, як сльози під дощем», — каже реплікант Бетті, відомий завдяки «Тому, хто біжить по лезу», в рідкісний момент поезії і виразності в цьому невмілому, докорінно неправильному фільмі від режисера, який навчався на телерекламі і нездатний або не бажає зрозуміти, що кіно — це цілком протилежне продажу туалетного паперу. Як би там не було, ця чудова репліка існує виключно завдяки імпровізації видатного нідерландського лицедія Рутгера Гауера. За це я вічно вдячний йому та його чутливому розуму.

На думку спадає й інша думка. Тепер у голові крутиться стільки думок, що складно підібрати відповідні цитати. З невеликим зусиллям я згадую це: «Смерть кожної комахи — це втрата, від якої ми ніколи не оговтаємось. Щоразу світові доводиться відтворювати себе наново». Ну звичайно! Великий індуїстський святий Джіва Госвамі. Був час зовсім недавно, коли я недбало та егоїстично вважав мертвих комах на лобовому склі незручністю, а не тисячею, ні, навіть мільйоном трагедій. Але треба визнати існування тих комах, як і сотні мільйонів їх розмазаних по склу родичів. Вони жили. Світ змінився завдяки їхній присутності. Я їх погано знав. Я так і не пізнав їх як особистостей і вже не дізнаюся ніколи, тому що вони назавжди втрачені, стерті зі скла моєю сорочкою, яка в свою чергу зіткана з мертвих тіл бавовняних рослин, про які я теж не дізнаюся. Невже й до Інго я був так само зневажливий? Чи я бачив у ньому важливу, незамінну сутність? Чи для мене він був лише засобом досягнення мети? На думку спадає джайніська лікарня для комах у Делі. Джайнізм — це, звичайно, стародавня і глибока релігійна філософія, яка, крім багатьох інших чудових ідей, вчить тому, що будь-яке життя священне. Так, вони мають лікарню для птахів, лікарню для корів, лікарню для креветок, а також вищезгадану лікарню для комах. Вже будуються лікарні і для інших істот, але робота над тим, щоб змінити людство на краще, потребує часу та грошей.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“I stare out the window at the tire plant across the street. I think about tires, how they’re round and have holes in their centers. It’s analogous to the missing film. Yet the empty space in the center of a tire is useful; it allows the tire to attach to the wheel, which allows it to turn on the axle, which allows the car to move forward. This gives me some hope. Perhaps this missing film will allow me to move forward. Perhaps the missing film is the hole in the tire that is my brain. We must look at loss in all its forms, mustn’t we? Loss of relationships, loss of love, loss of power, loss of memory, loss of status and the panic that ensues. We must accept that loss is a basic element of existence. The element of absence. All will be lost. “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,” says replicant Batty of Blade Runner fame, in a rare moment of poetry and coherence in that inept, wrongheaded film by a director who cut his teeth in television adverts and seems unwilling or unable to recognize that the purpose of cinema is antithetical to that of selling toilet tissue. Be that as it may, this is a profound line that exists only because it was improvised by the brilliant Dutch acteur Rutger Hauer. So I am forever grateful to him and his gevoelige geest.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“What I want is to be whole. I want to not hate myself. I want to be pretty. I want my parents to love me a million years ago in ways that they probably didn’t. Maybe they did. I think they did, but I can find no other explanation for this constant need, this unfillable hole, this conviction that I am repulsive, pathetic, disgusting. I search every face for some indication to the contrary. Pleadingly. I want them to look at me the way I look at those women, the ones who walk by not seeing me. Haughty and autonomous. Maybe this is why I have the beard. It is protesting too much. It says, I don’t need you to love me, to be attracted to me, and here’s how I will demonstrate that. I will look like a ridiculous intellectual. I will look dirty, as if perhaps I smell.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Y me pongo a rezar (pese a no ser religioso), pues en caída libre no existen los ateos”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Can I even know who I was before the world got its hands on me and turned me against myself into this…thing?”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind