Woody Allen Quotes

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

If the [actors] are working, and I have a dinner engagement, I don't do 20 takes. I do five takes and go home. I want to go to dinner.

The artist can't give you an answer that's satisfying to the dreadful reality of your existence. So the best you can do is maybe entertain people and refresh them for an hour-and-a-half.

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough. As you climb the ladder of success, be sure it's leaning against the right building. Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Remember, if you smoke after sex you're doing it too fast.

I asked the girl if she could bring a sister for me. She did. Sister Maria Teresa. It was a very slow evening. We discussed the New Testament. We agreed that He was very well adjusted for an only child.

Is it better to be the lover or the loved one? Neither, if your cholesterol is over six hundred. By love, of course, I refer to romantic love -- the love between man and woman, rather than between mother and child, or a boy and his dog, or two headwaiters.

I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

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

Taste my tuna casserole - tell me if I put in too much hot fudge.

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.

The best things in life are censored.

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

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

The prettiest women are almost always the most boring, and that is why some people feel there is no God.

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he's an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.

I've always been lucky in casting. The trick in casting is to hire great people, and let them do what they do, don't interfere with them too much. And then when they're great, take credit for it in the end.

Drama, it would be as if you wrote some poetry. You'd run the risk of being embarrassed if people read it, because you're pouring your heart out and you're not mitigating it with any humor or anything.

If I just got up in the morning and had no place to go and was retired or something, I would be sitting there and be thinking, "Gee, what is the purpose of life? Why are we all finite? Why do we get old and die? Is there nothing out there? Why is it so tragic? Why do our loved ones perish? Why do we generate?" Who wants to think about that stuff?

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

To me there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.

Should I marry W.? Not if she won't tell me the other letters in her name.

Once the movie's over, there's not much point. When the thing is edited, mixed, and color-corrected, and you've finished it... In my case, I never read anything about it, I never think about it.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

Paris is particularly beautiful in the rain. It was just a nice experience for me, a pleasant experience, and I was able to present it to the world through my eyes, very subjectively - not realistically, but subjectively.

Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful; provided you get between the right man and the right woman.

You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.

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.

How does gravity work? And if it were to cease suddenly, would certain restaurants still require a jacket?

The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought, particularly for those who bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held. On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily laying down.

I am two with nature.

Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

Some people think about sex all the time; some people think of sex some of the time; and some people never think about sex: they become lawyers.

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

he's a genius, she's a genius, wow, you know alot of geniuses, you should meet some stupid people sometime, you might learn something

I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.

Your still searching for me in every woman. You'll always seek to duplicate what we had. You know it.

Of all human weakness obsession is the most dangerous. And the silliest.

Every time you make a movie it's a new and different experience. You learn very little from the past. So, I'm a little bit better than I was when I first started.

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.

And in all of Babylonia there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, 'til the prophets bade the multitudes get a grip on themselves and shape up.

The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought.

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.

If I could just hope to have a major talent, then I would rather have it in music than in any other field.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be."

And Nietzche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're going to live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.