Human existence is a brutal experience to me... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it salvation is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most.
Woody AllenI have great faith in the actors. When they improvise, it always sounds better than the stuff I write in my bedroom. When they improvise, they make it sound alive.
Woody AllenI don't think my film style has changed. I'm doing the same kind of jokes I did when I was younger.
Woody AllenPale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. [...] But it wasnโt just intellectual experiencesโthey were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could โrelate without getting close.โ For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack.
Woody AllenAs 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 donโt 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?
Woody Allen