Quotes by Woody Allen
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I've always believed that thoughtful people don't really take the tabloids seriously. They're basically a form of entertainment. I enjoy them as much as the next New Yorker.

For some reason it gives people pleasure to equate the life of certain movie actors or actresses with their actual lives.

Since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. When I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw.

I'm a nice person! I have healthy life drives and goals! I don't drink, I don't smoke. I would never force myself sexually on a blind person!

And in all of Babylonia there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, 'til the prophets bade the multitudes get a grip on themselves and shape up.

I think there is too much wrong with the world to ever get too relaxed and happy. The more natural state, and the better one, I think, is one of some anxiety and tension over man's plight in this mysterious universe.

And Nietzche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're going to live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

There's nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet can't cure.

Man was made in God's image. Do you really think God has red hair and glasses?

The prettiest women are almost always the most boring, and that is why some people feel there is no God.

For me personally -- because I do it myself -- the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records -- jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer.

Life is unresolved, confusing, bewildering, puzzling, ambiguous. You don't really know what's going to happen. The future is uncertain for everybody.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.

In my next life I want to live backwards. Start out dead and finish off as an orgasm.

Some of the best memories of my childhood that I have are the times that I played hooky from school so I could spend my days in the public library reading all the wonderful books at my disposal.

I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff... I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.

There's something about my films; they're informed by my sensibility. I have the same preoccupations, the same interests... there's just something in the nuance, and so you always know it's a film of mine whether I sign my name to it or not.

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.

Show business is dog eat dog. It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls.

No matter what the shrinks, or the pundits, or the self-help books tell you, when it comes to love, it's luck.

Music has always helped my films. In 'The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion,' you can hear 'Sunrise' by Glenn Miller, an idol of my childhood, in the surprise ending. I like mixing comedy with suspense and action.

If there is reincarnation, I'd like to come back as Warren Beatty's fingertips.

I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty.

Umlaut snaps around and we cut to a blond apparition in her early twenties, clearly descended from Olympus by way of Hugh Hefner's mansion.

Man cannot live by bread alone. Every once in awhile he needs a salad.

I like broad comedy. If I had an idea tomorrow for a film that was all slapstick and broad comedy, and it was an idea that interested me, I would not hesitate to do it because I enjoy watching these kinds of film.

A stockbroker is someone who invests other people's money until it is all gone.

One man starving puts a crimp in my evening.

For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good.

Problems are like toilet paper. You pull on one and ten more come.

I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player.

I asked the girl if she could bring a sister for me. She did. Sister Maria Teresa. It was a very slow evening. We discussed the New Testament. We agreed that He was very well adjusted for an only child.

Child molestation is a touchy subject... Read the papers! Half the country's doing it!

I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

When I asked my mother where babies came from, she thought I said rabies. She said you get them from being bitten by a dog. The next week, a woman on my block gave birth to triplets... I thought she'd been bitten by a Great Dane.

Abysmal vermin that I am, I couldn't of course tell her that it was her incredible mother that I wanted to see again… I knew only as I drove through the cold, night autumn air that somewhere Freud, Sophocles and Eugene O'Neill were laughing.

The only love that lasts is unrequited love.

But what if everyone in the world behaved like me and came here and shot Brisseau through the ear? What a mess! And of course we'd need valet parking.

There is always the possibility that people will change. Real change is more rare. You are who you are at a certain age in life you are pretty much a variation of that your whole life. It's conceivable that you will change but it's not likely.

They were doing the Dying Swan at the ballet. And there was a rumor that some bookmarkers had drifted into town from upstate New York and that they had fixed the bullet. There was a lot of money bet on the swan to live.

Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.

Beautiful, funny, smart, sexual, and also neurotic? It's like filling an inside straight.

I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

The audience goes to sleep really quickly! If you have a slight pause at the wrong time, that's it!

Some people are funny, and some people are not funny. Many people who are not funny can make a living at it. You don't have to be great to make a living at it. Just like a doctor who doesn't have to be great can still make a living out of it.

I don't know what I'm doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm.

The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.

There are three rings involved with marriage. The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.

Reality may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it's still the only place where you can get a decent steak.

A fast word about oral contraception. I was involved in an extremely good example of oral contraception two weeks ago. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said 'no.'

The study of economy usually shows us that the best time for purchase was last year.

I consider myself a completely lucky filmmaker. I've had nothing but good luck. Everything I've needed has come my way.

All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.

Eternity is really long, especially near the end.

I'm afraid of the dark,and suspicious of the light.

I should have known something was wrong with my first wife. When I brought her home to meet my parents, they approved of her.

Manute Bol is so skinny they save money on road trips. They just fax him from city to city.

He's a genius, she's a genius, wow, you know alot of geniuses, you should meet some stupid people sometime, you might learn something.

No one ever wants the whole script. I give the whole script to people who require the whole script but to those people who don't require the whole script I don't give it to them and no one cares. They're relieved not to have to read extra pages that they're not in.

All i have in my life is my imagination.

Life is hard for insects. And don't think mice are having any fun either.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones
slept better, Cloquet thought, while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking
hours much more.

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

Love is too weak a word for what I feel -- I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes.

Just don't take any class where you have to read Beowulf.

And my parents finally realize I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.

Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.

I don't want to live forever through my work. I want to live forever by not dying.

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

Bullshit french post-war rationalizing.

Side Effects Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on the weekend. Woody Allen Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.

I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.

Our love, our love will last forever. It's forever but it just doesn't work. That's why it will always be romantic because it can not be complete.

Your still searching for me in every woman. You'll always seek to duplicate what we had. You know it.

It's funny. Maria Elena and I, we are meant for each other and not meant for each other, it's a contradiction.

I can live in Paris for four months or London or, you know, Barcelona. These are places that are like New York. But I don't think I could live in many places. When I had to make a film in the United States I picked San Francisco because to me it's one of the great cities of America.

I never wanted to or expected to make a film outside of New York. New York became very, very expensive. The same $18 million spent in Barcelona or Rome goes much further there.

I wish my parents had raised me in Manhattan because I think it's the greatest thing you can do for a kid is to raise them in New York City. I can see this with my own children.

My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst.

Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.

Why not? Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain -- and this is a chance for something special.

I've become the person I've always hated, but I'm happier.

I like the rain. It washes memories off the sidewalk of life.

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing 'Embraceable You' in spats.

Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.

Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful; provided you get between the right man and the right woman.

Sex on Twitter can't hurt you -- unless you fall off.

The last time I was inside a woman was when I went to the Statue of Liberty.

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.