Noah Baumbach Quotes

Author Image

Noah Baumbach

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 3, 1969

It's kind of major, learning to drive. I feel like it kicked up other stuff in my life.

Noah Baumbach

When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.

Noah Baumbach

Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'

Noah Baumbach

Anyone who's putting money into your movie would always rather you cast well-known people.

Noah Baumbach

I get a lot of responses to my movies. Some people say, 'Oh, I thought it was really funny - I hope that's okay!' And my answer always is 'Yes. It's totally okay.'

Noah Baumbach

I suppose some studio executive would say it's death for a comedy if people aren't all laughing in the same places, but I find with my movies that people laugh in very different places. I can't control it.

Noah Baumbach

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.

Noah Baumbach

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

Noah Baumbach

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.

Noah Baumbach

I'm curious how people build up the codes that they live their life by, and how they come to think that that's the best way for them to function.

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.

Noah Baumbach

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.'

Noah Baumbach

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.

Noah Baumbach

We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.

Noah Baumbach

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.

Noah Baumbach

I guess I'm interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with these huge blind spots in terms of their own behavior.

Noah Baumbach

I think all my movies are about transitions to some degree.

Noah Baumbach

I don't like when you necessarily know that this is the end of the movie. I like when a movie ends abruptly. You go through this, and some of the scenes are uncomfortable, and some are funny - and then suddenly it's over.

Noah Baumbach

I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life.

Noah Baumbach

I still carry the residue of the pressure I felt as a child to read and appreciate the right books. Growing up, I never allowed myself to read beach reading. I was always plowing through Ford Madox Ford's 'Good Solider' or something I wasn't equipped to understand.

Noah Baumbach