Woody Allen Quotes

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

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.

You can be with your wife, very happily married, and then you meet some woman and you love her. But you love your wife, too. And you also love that one. Or if she's met some man and she loves the man and she loves you. And then you meet somebody else and now there are three of you. Why only one person?

The heart wants what it wants.

As a boy, I was ashamed to wear glasses. I memorized the eye chart, and then on the test they asked essay questions.

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

I never knew what Amazon was. I've never seen any of those series, even on cable. I've never seen The Sopranos, or Mad Men. I'm out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there's Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.

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

In formulating any philosophy the first consideration must always be: What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, 'My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.

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 believe people ought to mate for life...like pigeons or Catholics.

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'm in show business. I'm not like a poor factory worker who'd been laid off.

A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.

Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen.

I didn't go to Paris until I was a grown-up in 1965. And when I went to Paris, it was the Paris I knew only from American movies.

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night.

I love baseball. You know, it doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just very beautiful to watch.

I enjoy the making of the film and it's something for me to do. If nobody ever comes to my films, if people don't want to give me money to make films, that will stop me. But as long as people come all over the world and I have an audience and I have ideas for films, I will do them for as long as I enjoy the process. And I like the whole process of making a film.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

In fact, when they wake up in the morning, they're Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro or Josh Brolin. And it's built-in, but they think it's all this other stuff. But it's not. They'd be great if they didn't think about their part or if they did think about it.

I've always been interested in being in other people's movies. I never get any offers.

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.

Me and nature are two.

Better not think too much. Relying more on the body: it is more trustworthy.

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Marriage is like mushrooms: we notice too late if they are good or bad.

My ex-wife was a philosophy major at NYU. Yeah, she and I used to have deep philosophical discussions where she would prove that I didn't exist.

You can learn technological things, you can learn about specific things, but the real problems that people deal with in any subject, existential subjects or romantic subjects, you never learn anything. So you make a fool of yourself when you're 20, you make a fool of yourself at 40, at 60 at 80. The ancient Greeks were dealing with these problems. They screwed up all the time. People do now.

I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.

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I believe that sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five, it's fantastic.

I feel that humor, just like Fred Astaire dance numbers or these lightweight musicals, gives you a little oasis. You are in this horrible world and for an hour and a half you duck into a dark room and it's air-conditioned and the sun is not blinding you and you leave the terror of the universe behind and you are completely transported into an escapist situation. The women are beautiful, the men are witty and heroic, nobody has terrible problems and this is a delightful escapist thing, and you leave the theater refreshed.

We laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree,' probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Men would make love with any number of women ... even total strangers, while females were selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming: "Let us out, let us out!".

For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have.

There have been times when I've thought about it - but with my luck it would probably turn out to be only a temporary solution.

You're still in love' 'No I'm not, I'm not She'll always be a part of me, and she's an important person in my life but for the two of us something wasn't working.' 'What element?' 'We never found out

You can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, movies, by the nonsense. "Can I get my kid into this private school? Can I get this girl to go out with me Saturday night? Am I going to get the promotion in my office?" All this stuff, but in the end the universe burns out. So I think it's completely meaningless.

When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.

I was a nervous child, I was a bedwetter. I used to sleep with an electric blanket and I was constantly electrocuting myself.

Even if God exists, he's done such a terrible job, it's a wonder people don't get together and file a class action suit against him.

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.

The last woman I was in was the Statue of Liberty.