There is no advantage getting older. You don't get smarter, you don't get wiser, you don't get more mellow, you don't get more kindly, nothing good happens. Your back hurts more, you get more indigestion, your eyesight isn't as good, you need a hearing aid. It's a bad business getting old and I would advise you not to do it if you can avoid it. It doesn't have a romantic quality.
Woody AllenThe difference between sex and death is, death you can do alone and nobody laughs at you.
Woody AllenI've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.
Woody AllenParis is a very exciting city. I learned about Paris the same way that Americans do: from the movies.
Woody AllenYou know, it's one thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on.
Woody AllenGod, you Jews are truly exotic." Exotic? She should only know the Greenblatts. Or Mr. and Mrs. Milton Sharpstein, my father's friends. Or for that matter, my cousin Tovah. Exotic? I mean, they're nice, but hardly exotic with their endless bickering over the best way to combat indigestion or how far back to sit from the television set.
Woody AllenRight now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.
Woody AllenThere is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?
Woody AllenI do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without being brainwashed into it or suckered into it by all the organized hustles.
Woody AllenLife is short. Short, and not about anything except what you can touch and what touches you.
Woody AllenI should have known something was wrong with my first wife. When I brought her home to meet my parents, they approved of her.
Woody AllenMeanwhile, 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.
Woody AllenThere is an advantage in having a routine and working with the same people when you can and in writing as a regular thing and filming as a regular thing. That routine pays off for you. You get a lot of productivity that way, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration and waiting for the perfect thing to happen. I would be much less productive that way.
Woody AllenI see no advantages in aging whatsoever. You become shriveled. You become decrepit. You lose your faculties. Your peer group passes away. You sit in a room gumming your porridge. I don't see any advantage in this whatsoever.
Woody AllenYou know what my philosophy of life is? That it’s important to have some laughs, but you got to suffer a little too, because otherwise you miss the whole point to life.
Woody AllenFilm is more of novelty, because I've done so much theater over many years. I'm in love with making movies. Also, I find it easier to remember three minutes of dialogue than three hours.
Woody AllenI've inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father's hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother's surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.
Woody AllenWhen you travel around the country, you see what a tough town New York is: rude, competitive, a town where good, logical ideas are ignored in favor of unworkable ones. And yet, all these other towns are so dead and boring compared to New York.
Woody AllenWe live in far too permissive a society. Never before has pornography been this rampant. And those films are so badly lit!
Woody AllenThat’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.
Woody AllenI wouldn't necessarily want to be a big muscular guy. It's nice to be gorgeous whether you're male or female assuming you don't lose whatever else you have.
Woody AllenThe talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.
Woody AllenI said this to my daughter, if you don't practice the guitar, when you get older you wouldn't be able to play it. It's that simple. If you want to play the guitar, you put a half hour in everyday, but you have to do it.
Woody AllenYou always think another time would have been ideal for you . . . the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist.
Woody AllenThe whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don't.
Woody AllenThere's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.
Woody AllenPlease forgive me. My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe. It required bandaging.
Woody Allen