Woody Allen Quotes

I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving dishes for Chinese restaurants.

It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock.

The process of making films is so technically demanding that it's a distraction. You don't spend your time thinking about the philosophical content, which is often very depressing.

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

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

In certain areas I don't function well and in other areas I function very well. I'm very good professionally. I have good discipline, I'm able to write every day and do films and not go six times over the budget. I mean I'm a coherent person, but I also don't like to go through tunnels when I travel. I'm claustrophobic.

Sometimes some of the best moments are contributed by the actors being creative, with their own improvisations.

When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.

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

You can't work at a relationship; you can't control it. You have to be lucky and go through your life. If you are not lucky you have to be prepared for some degree of suffering. That's why most relationships are very difficult and have some degree of pain. People stay together because of inertia, they don't have the energy. Because they are frightened of being lonely, or they have children.

I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

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.

I'm a big believer in supporting the action on film with the appropriate music. It covers a multitude of sins. It's gotten me out of a lot of jams, over the years. So, music for me is a very big thing in films and I use it unashamedly.

Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.

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.

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.

I can make films. And some of them come out good, and some of them come out better, and some of them come out worse. But I've been very lucky over the years to be able to sustain the length of career that I've had.

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.

Am I my brother's keeper? Yes. Interestingly, in my case, I share that honor with the Prospect Park Zoo.

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.

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.

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

I think universal harmony is a pipedream and it may be more productive to focus on more modest goals, like a ban on yodeling.

When you make the film, it's like a chef who works on the meal. After you're working all day in the kitchen and dicing and cutting and putting the sauces on, you don't want to eat it. That's how I always feel about the films. I work on it for a year. I've written it, I've worked with the actors, I've edited, put the music in. I just never want to see it again.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

The key point about a demonstration is that it must be seen. Hence the term "demonstration." If a person demonstrates privately in his own home, this is not technically a demonstration but merely "acting silly" or "behaving like an ass.

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.

In short, the best thing to do is behave in a manner befitting one's age. If you are sixteen or under, try not to go bald.

Subjectivity is objective.

I can't with any conscience argue for New York with anyone. It's like Calcutta. But I love the city in an emotional, irrational way, like loving your mother or your father even though they're a drunk or a thief. I've loved the city my whole life - to me, it's like a great woman.

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

I can't enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.

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.

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.

Someday the lion is going to lie down with the lamb, but the lamb isn't going to get much sleep.

Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

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.

I hope you're getting this down.

I do feel it's important to have some kind of faith in something, but [it is] impossible for many of us. I personally don't have any faith in anything, but it's great if you can.

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

One filmmaker makes films that are deep, intellectual, profound and confrontational. And the other one makes purely vacuous, escapist films. I'm not sure the one who makes escapist films is making a poorer contribution than the one who makes the deeper films.

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

What if the worst is true? What if there's no God, and you only go around once, and that's it? Don't you want to be a part of the experience? You know, what the hell? It's not all a drag, and I'm thinking to myself: Geez! I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after-who knows? Maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know that maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have.

I'm a creature of the New York City streets.

If my soul exists without my body I am convinced all my clothes will be loose-fitting

I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.

My father owned a small piece of land. He carried it with him wherever he went.

Change is almost always negative. Things degenerate.