Top 826 Quotes & Sayings by Woody Allen - Page 12

The French make two mistakes about me. They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money.

There are three things Jewish people worship-God, Chinese food and wall-to-wall carpeting.

I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.

Then Job fell to his knees and cried to the Lord, "Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory. Thou hast a good job. Don't blow it."

Love may be the answer, but even though you're watching for the solution, intercourse raises some rather interesting thoughts.

Notes for a ballet, The Spell: ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman - unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes.

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

With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.

Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?

Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants.

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.

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.

I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates.

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

I hate the beach. I hate the sun. I'm pale and I'm redheaded. I don't tan - I stroke!

If you aren't failing every now and then, you're probably playing it too safe.

I, interestingly, had dated a woman in the Eisenhower Administration briefly, and it was ironic to me 'cause I was trying to do toher what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.

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

No, no, I'm a lowbrow. I read [Dostoevsky] more out of obligation than enjoyment. For enjoyment, for me, it's a beer and the football game.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

It's hard for me to know. I'll think, 'I really brought off my ideas, it's great,' and no one sparks to it

When you start putting a higher value on works of art than people, you’re forfeiting your humanity.

One man starving puts a crimp in my evening.

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

Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.

If I had my life to live over, I wish I could be a great pianist or something.

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

In real life, Keaton believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.

There are worse things than death. Many of them playing at a theater near you.

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

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.

You're a genius! And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent.

When a film is reviled, you open a film and people say "Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie." You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say "Oh, they hated your film." You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares.

I can't even make a leap of faith to believe in my own existence.

I don't wanna live on in my work. I wanna live on in my apartment.

Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I would rather live on in my apartment.

It's all through the actors; I cannot write in that idiom

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.

I think Bergman's films have eternal relevance, because they deal with the difficulty of personal relationships and lack of communication between people and religious aspirations and mortality, existential themes that will be relevant a thousand years from now. When many of the things that are successful and trendy today will have been long relegated to musty-looking antiques, his stuff will still be great.

The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants.

As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?

When I am in New York, I want to be in Europe, and when I am in Europe, I want to be in New York.

I don't inhale because it gives you cancer, but I look so incredibly handsome with a cigarette that I can't not hold one.

I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.

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

Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn't give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn't even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.

I feel about New York as a child whose father is a bank robber. Not perfect, but I still love him.

I always thought that as long as man is mortal, he will never be relaxed.

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.

My Lord, my Lord! What hath Thou done lately?

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

I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.

I love the rain - it washes memories off the sidewalk of life.

Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my name

I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things-or who doesn't win them-you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is.

The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other.

It figures you've got to hate yourself if you've got any integrity at all.

90% of success in life is showing up

If you're not failing, you're not trying anything.

I didn't know he was dead; I thought he was British.