Quotes by Woody Allen

I've often said, the only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

I've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.

You look up after many years and you find that a film has become a classic because it's meaningful to people and alive, decade after decade.

Existence for eternity could get a little boring... especially towards the end.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have,
instead of what you don't have.

When we lose twenty pounds. We may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty.

The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.

I believe in God, Miriam. I know it. Because, without God the world is a cesspool.

He never made the ten-most-wanted list. It's very unfair voting. It's who you know.

Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Marriage is the death of hope.

Please forgive me. My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe.
It required bandaging.

I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket.
He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.

I was the captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play all the neurotics on sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters, and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really funny.
I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back.

Honey, you're the one who stopped sleeping with me, OK?
It'll be a year come April 20th.
I remember the date exactly, because it was Hitler's birthday.

A deranged person is supposed to have the strength of ten men.
I have the strength of one small boy... with polio.

You can't anticipate in the room the riches of what you encounter when you're location hunting for a movie.

This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can't.

I'd rather hurt Lee a little, than
destroy Hannah.

I don't believe in competition for artistic things. I just like the atmosphere of the Cannes festival. I don't want to win anything or lose anything.

Some men are heterosexual and some men are bisexual and some men don't think about sex at all ... you know, they become lawyers.

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.

I don't like to meet the actor and have a lot of conferences and talk about their sub-life and their off-screen life and their back stories and all that nonsense, because it never means anything.

Cynicism is reality with an alternate spelling.

I'm awash in self-contempt!

With me; it's just a genetic dissatisfaction with everything.

I've been escaping my whole life. Since I was a little child, I escaped into the movies on the other side as an audience member. I escaped by going into the movies and sitting in the movies all day long.

The most expensive sex is free sex.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

The universe is haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.

If I can play a scene in a master shot, I always prefer it. And the actors always prefer it. It's fun to look at on the screen, the actors get a chance to sink their teeth into something substantial, and it's economically helpful.

Have you ever taken a serious political stand on anything? Yeah. Sure. For twenty-four hours once I refused to eat grapes.

How does gravity work? And if it were to cease suddenly, would certain restaurants still require a jacket?

You are always a comedian by default. You are this way because you've been forced to be this way, but it is better to be the hero. So if you can be a persona, the great one of my lifetime of course was and is Marlon Brando.

I'd like to make a great movie. I've made many movies. I think I've made some good movies, but I never felt I've made a great movie.

Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. It was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service.

The meaning of life is that nobody knows the meaning of life.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

But it was I -- yes I -- who discovered the link between excessive masturbation and entry into politics!

I think aging has nothing to recommend it. You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.

You mellow too much you ripen and rot.

Writing is great because in the writing you never have to... First of all you never have to leave your home. And you never have to meet the test of reality when you're writing.

There is dignity in suffering; nobility in pain; but failure is a salted wound, that burns and burns again!

I believe people ought to mate for life...like pigeons or Catholics.

People always ask me, Do you ever think you'll wake up one morning and not be funny? That thought would never occur to me -- it's an odd thought and not realistic. Because funny and me are not separate. We're one.

Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again. God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

I never think I feel cynical in general. Cynical is reality with an alternate spelling. I feel there's a gigantic amount of injustice and overt crime every day in the world, from emotional crimes to international crimes, and it often carries rewards.

It's a match made in heaven...by a retarded angel.

I think I've gotten technically better over the years but you'd have to be a fool not to. I've made so many movies that by sheer quantity you get better at the technique.

Showing up is 80 percent of life.

The dictatorship is shut up, democracy is always concerned.

Subjectivity is objective.

Stanley Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly.

I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects. It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given fingerpaints.

Better not think too much. Relying more on the body: it is more trustworthy.

There have been times when I've thought about it -- but with my luck it would probably turn out to be only a temporary solution.

I am two with nature.

That's the way I feel about the world: there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way -- going out and doing them. As ugly a truth as that is, I do think it's the truth about the world.

I want to return to the womb, anyone's.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.

Achilles only had an Achilles heel, I have an entire Achilles body.

You always think another time would have been ideal for you ... the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist.

I sued American Apparel because they calculatingly took my name, my likeness and image and used them publicly to promote their business.

When you write the script, you're home in a room by yourself, and you're writing, and there's no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices.

Early in life, I was visited by the bluebird of anxiety.

This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?

Ads answered out of desperation in the New York Review of Books proved equally futile as…the 'Bay Area Bisexual' told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.

A Bay Area Bisexual told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.

Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?

You make a film and always hope you're going make Citizen Kane or The Bicycle Thief. You make the film, and for one reason or another, one clicks and one doesn't, but it's out of your control completely.

Once the movie's over, there's not much point. When the thing is edited, mixed, and color-corrected, and you've finished it... In my case, I never read anything about it, I never think about it.

I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director.

To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.

A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.

If God is everywhere, I had concluded, then He is in food. Therefore, the more I ate the godlier I would become. Impelled by this new religious fervor, I glutted myself like a fanatic.

New York is my home and I have a particular fondness for it. I think it's a place where you can generate any kind of story wonderfully. But I also would be very happy to make a film in Paris or Rome.

Doing abominations is against the law, particularly if the abominations are done while wearing a lobster bib.

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysenery.

Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.

I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.

Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.

I know of only six genuine comic geniuses in movie history; Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx and Harpo Marx, Peter Sellers, and W.C. Fields.

If I could only see one miracle, just one miracle. Like a burning bush, or the seas part, or my uncle Sasha pick up a check.

Hey listen -- I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.

I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier.

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

Don't think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses.

I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.

I've always had an easy time directing actors because I always hire ones that are great before I get my hands on them.

Change is almost always negative. Things degenerate.

As the author you know how you want it to appear on screen and it's always the content dictating the form.

Every time you make a movie it's a new and different experience. You learn very little from the past. So, I'm a little bit better than I was when I first started.

I have one last request. Don't use embalming fluid on me; I want to be stuffed with crab meat.

Honey! Bring down a copy of my will -- and an eraser!

I got a divorce because my ex-wife left me for another woman.

I carry a bullet in my breast pocket. Once, a crazy evangelist threw a bible at me, which would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.

The content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film -- as in Husbands and Wives -- is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, nervous New York film, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance.

I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm taking an extra pair of underwear just in case.

I've never dated a fictional character before. The closest I ever came was an Italian.

I have a hyper-active imagination, my mind tends to jump around a little, and I have some trouble between fantasy and reality.

When I get up in the morning, I go and I work with beautiful women and charming men and funny comedians and dramatic artists. And I'm presented with costumes and great music to choose from and sets. I travel a certain amount of places, so I've been living in a bubble. And I like it.

Taste my tuna casserole -- tell me if I put in too much hot fudge.

I don't respond well to mellow, you know what I mean, I have a tendency to... if I get too mellow, I ripen and then rot.

When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.

All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that.

Even if God exists, he's done such a terrible job, it's a wonder people don't get together and file a class action suit against him.

I see the glass half full...but of poison.

My heart says one thing. My head says another. Very hard to get your heart and head together in life.

What advice would I give the average homeowner to protect himself against burglars? Well, the first thing is to keep a light on in the house when you go out. It must be at least a sixty-watt bulb; anything less and the burglar will ransack the house, out of contempt for the wattage.

I'd always wanted to be a dramatic. Comedy comes more naturally to me. I can do it with more facility. So I feel more comfortable with it.

Once munching has begun, Schopenhauer held, the human will cannot resist further munching, and the result is a universe with crumbs over everything.

That's one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing's real, it just lives.

I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats.

In a relationship, it is better to be the leaver than the leavee.

While we're waiting for a cab I'll give you your lesson for today. Don't listen to what your teachers tell ya, you know. Don't pay attention. Just, just see what they look like and that's how you'll know what life is really gonna be like.

Is there a separation between body and mind, and if so which is it better to have?

Life is horrible, but it is not relentlessly black from wire to wire. You can sit down and hear a Mozart symphony, or you can watch the Marx Brothers, and this will give you a pleasant escape for a while. And that is about the best that you can do.

Men would make love with any number of women ... even total strangers, while females were selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming: Let us out, let us out!.

Until you've been kissed on a rainy Parisian afternoon -- you've never been kissed.

Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer. Not to love is to suffer.

My grandfather had a wonderful funeral... On the buffet table there was a replica of the deceased in potato salad.

My grandfather was a very insignificant man, actually. At his funeral his hearse followed the other cars.

Psychoanalyses is like music lessons, for 5 years you do not notice any progress and suddenly you can play the piano.

Meanwhile, the minute you put on the dotted line your Sam Hancock -- and before a notary -- you'll not only get the negative but Elsie makes a wonderful stuffed cabbage which we'll include gratis a few portions but return the jars please.

He's a politician. That's a notch below child molester.

I work all the time because it's a great distraction and it keeps me from sitting home and obsessing morbidly.

We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices.

I'm very old-fashioned. I believe that people should stay married for life, like pigeons and Catholics.

No Matter what you do there will be critics.

People say that death is a part of life and there must be something to it, but I just see it as bad news and I want everybody to stop sugarcoating it.

You make films whether they're dramas or comedies about neurotic people. Flawed people. Interesting personality traits. To make them about calm, stable untroubled people isn't interesting.

Take the money and run.

Because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine.