Noah Baumbach Quotes

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Noah Baumbach

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 3, 1969

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.

Noah Baumbach

I always viewed life as material for a movie.

Noah Baumbach

I know people who are incredibly successful who still dress the way they did when they were 18, just because they still think that's how they look good.

Noah Baumbach

We all have these notions of cool that come about at different points in our lives, and it's interesting in how it evolves or doesn't evolve in different people.

Noah Baumbach

I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel.

Noah Baumbach

Being articulate, my parents could make anything sound reasonable.

Noah Baumbach

The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.

Noah Baumbach

I like the way corduroys feel. I like the sort of jean aspect of corduroys, but also the texture of them. They probably remind me of my childhood, too, I think. I wore cords, and my dad had a corduroy jacket.

Noah Baumbach

I like shooting in New York because I have such a connection to the city. I have so many memories there.

Noah Baumbach

Many of the crew members I work with and continue to work with were friends or have become close friends, and so we keep working together. And I like casting friends of mine or people I know in parts I know would be perfect for them. I like to bring things and people that mean something to me in to my work.

Noah Baumbach

I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I've done that my whole life.

Noah Baumbach

Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.

Noah Baumbach

Peter Bogdanovich is a good friend.

Noah Baumbach

I watch movies all the time, so it's hard to pick certain specific directors that have inspired me in the aggregate.

Noah Baumbach

I didn't train in directing; I talk to actors the way I talk to anybody.

Noah Baumbach

I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you're going through something that's painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people because it's harder to find faults in yourself.

Noah Baumbach

It's funny, I'm very analytical in my real life, but in terms of my films, I try to not analyze them at all and let things just go into them and let them be what they are. I mean, people ask me to this day what 'The Squid and the Whale' stood for, and I have no idea except that it's an exhibit in the Natural History Museum.

Noah Baumbach

As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.

Noah Baumbach

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.

Noah Baumbach

I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.

Noah Baumbach