"[voiceover] Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more. Improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something, or took up an instrument. I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that. Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's going to change that."

"What the hell do you need binoculars for?!"

"I have to go right home. I know how to finish the script now. It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with Amelia, thinking he knows how to finish the script. Shit, that's voice-over. McKee would not approve. How else can I show his thoughts? I don't know. Oh, who cares what McKee says? It feels right. Conclusive. I wonder who's gonna play me. Someone not too fat. I liked that Gerard Depardieu, but can he not do the accent? Anyway, it's done. And that's something. So: 'Kaufman drives off from his encounter with Amelia, filled for the first time with hope.' I like this. This is good."

"You are what you love, not what loves you, I decided that a long time ago."

"[delighted] I got shot. Isn't that fucked up?"

"McKee says we all have to realize we write in a genre, so we must find originality within that genre. Did you know that there hasn't been a new genre since Fellini invented the mockumentary...? My genre's thriller, what's yours?"

"[reads] Sometimes this kind of story turns out to be something more, some glimpse of life that expands like those japanese paper balls you drop in water and they bloom into flowers and the flower is so marvelous you can't believe there was a time all you saw in front of you was a paper ball and a glass of water."

"Who's gonna play me? I think I should play me."

"I'm probably the smartest person I know."

"By simply doing what they are designed to do something large and magnificient happens. In this sense they show us how to live. How the only barometer you have is your heart. How when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way."

"Bad things happen, darkness descends."

"I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels like to care about something passionately."

"There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more managable size."

"Most people yearn for something exceptional, something so inspiring that they'd want to risk everything for that passion, but few would act on it. It was very powerful and intoxicating to be around someone so alive."

"It's over. Everything, I did everything wrong. I want my life back. I want it back before everything got fucked up. I want to be a baby again. I want to be new. I want to be new."

"Change is not a choice. Not for a species of plant, and not for me."

"I'll tell you a secret. The last act makes the film. Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina. Your characters must change, and the change must come from them. Do that, and you'll be fine."

"I love you too, you know."

"Nicolas Cage as Charlie Kaufman / Donald Kaufman"

"Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean"

"Chris Cooper as John Laroche"

"Cara Seymour as Amelia Kavan"

"Brian Cox as Robert McKee"

"Tilda Swinton as Valeria Thomas"

"Ron Livingston as Marty Bowen"

"Maggie Gyllenhaal as Caroline Cunningham"

"Judy Greer as Alice"

"[voiceover] To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. So I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana nut. That's a good muffin."

"I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcome obstacles to succeed in the end. The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that, it just isn't."

"[voiceover] I should have gone in. I'm such a chicken. I should have kissed her. I should go knock on her door and just kiss her. It would be romantic. It would be something we'd tell our kids about someday. I'm going to do that right now. [drives away]"

"You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?"

"I'd wanna let the movie exist, rather than be artificially plot-driven."

"Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate."

"I'd fuck me. [Watching television documentary on his puppeteering when he's in John Malkovich's body.]"

"Maxine. Maxine. I love you, Maxine. Oh, look away. Look away [Looking through Emily's eyes at the end]"

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have two people look at you, with total lust and devotion, through the same pair of eyes?"

"Behind the stubble and the too-prominent brow and the male-pattern baldness... I sensed your feminine longing. And it just slew me."

"Sounds great. Who the fuck is John Malkovich?"

"Help! He's locking me in a cage!"

"Don't stand in the way of my actualization as a man."

"I have been to the dark side. I have seen a world that no man should see."

"That portal is mine, and it must be sealed forever for the love of God!"

"It's my head, Schwartz! It's my head!"

"Truth is for suckers, Johnny Boy."

"Maybe she's using you to channel some dead lesbian lover."

"Hot lesbian witches! Think about it! It's fucking genius!"

"You're nuts to let a girl go that calls you Lotte, I tell you that as a friend."

"Dr. Lester: Forever doomed to watch the world through someone else's eyes."

"Ever wanted to be someone else? Now you can."