Quotes from Noah Baumbach

I made two movies very young, and then I had trouble getting a movie made, and so - which was both, I think, a plus and a minus. It was a minus because it made me unhappy.

How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

I think I've always been drawn to the notion of talk as cinematic.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

I thought at the time of my parents' divorce that I was upset by deeper, more profound things and I was just taking it out on the joint custody agreement. But that disruption was bad enough. That was a huge deal for a teenager.

I've run into more people walking in L.A. than if I drove. Because you stand out so much if you walk. People from my past have stopped their cars and said, 'Hey!' But if I was in a car, they never would've seen me.

I don't know any writer of fiction who enjoys trying to point out or dissect whatever they produced with strangers and let them go through it and pick apart what's real and what isn't.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

I grew up in the heat of '70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.

It's kind of a crazy art form, movies, in that you have to get it right the day you do it, generally.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

That's the nice thing about collaborating with someone: Your work becomes a conversation.

I try to procrastinate, if I can, productively, like I'll work on something else as procrastination. Or I take a walk. Because often I find, if you get out, more things come to you.

I don't agree with the idea that my characters are unlikeable.

Wes Anderson's films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them.

I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it's your friend.

A lot of black-and-white films generally have a color version that will be used for TV.

I think it's always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.

When I start a movie, there will be certain films that I watch again just because the vibe seems right.

I really like my first movie a lot, 'Kicking and Screaming.' I think it's a - I'm very pleased and proud of that movie, but it wasn't the - it wasn't 'Citizen Kane' right out of the box, you know? It wasn't 'Sex, Lies and Videotape.'

I wouldn't say 'Frances Ha' is autobiographical, but it's definitely very personal.

I'm sure I've said some pretty bad pick-up lines.

I try to write 'and it's all very funny' after each scene description so that the reader can imagine the movie in their head.