Woody Allen Quotes

If you're born with a gift, to behave like it's an achievement is not right.

I can't do anything to death, doctor's orders.

Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

I can levitate birds. No one cares.

What is so fascinating about sitting around watching a bunch of pituitary cases stuff a ball through a hoop?

I don't know what I want, but I know what I don't want

Fantasy is seductive and much more wonderful than reality, but you can't take it to the bank. It's always an escape. And if used as an escape, as in attending a movie or a show for a circumscribed period of time, it's fine. When it starts to become undifferentiated from reality, it leads to big trouble.

Why not? Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain - and this is a chance for something special.

I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.

I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back.

Your audience teaches you how to be funny.

There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a microscope.

I foresee death by culture shock.

At the trial Stubbs chose to act as his own lawyer, but a conflict over his fee led to ill feelings.

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.

You can't ride two horses with one behind.

Early in life, I was visited by the bluebird of anxiety

It's easier to direct. If you direct something poorly and re-shoot it the next day, stage it better, make it work better, you have a lot of possibilities. You can edit it in certain ways so that it works, but there's no getting around weaknesses of the script.

She had been critical of his new torch song, "A Side Order of Heartache, Please," suggesting it could be used as a good way to break in their new paper shredder.

In perpetrating a revolution, there are two requirements: someone or something to revolt against and someone to actually show up and do the revolting. Dress is usually casual and both parties may be flexible about time and place, but if either faction fails to attend, the whole enterprise is likely to come off badly.

The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God's mind -- a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you've just made a down payment on a house.

The true test of maturity is not how old a person is but how he reacts to awakening in the mid-town area in his shorts.

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

I was raised in a religious home. It was unreasonable enforced religion that turned me off it. It was a joyless, unpleasant, stupid, barbaric thing when I was a child and I've never gotten over that feeling. If you're talking about religion it's one thing; I don't hold Jewish religion with any more seriousness than I would any other.

Men learn to love the woman they are attracted to. Women learn to become attracted to the man they fall in love with.

My grammy never gave gifts, you know. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.

I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist.

You make a film and always hope you're going make "Citizen Kane" or "The Bicycle Thief." You make the film, and for one reason or another, one clicks and one doesn't, but it's out of your control completely.

I've often felt that life is a hard deal and it's unrelentingly tragic and an uphill fight.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket. He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.

I've never dated a fictional character before. The closest I ever came was an Italian.

I was in analysis for years because of a traumatic childhood; I was breast-fed through falsies.

If you take a frown and turn it upside down, the person you are holding by the ankles will soon pass out.

It seems to me that making escapist films might be a better service to people than making intellectual ones and making films that deal with issues. It might be better to just make escapist comedies that don't touch on any issues. The people just get a cool lemonade, and then they go out refreshed, they enjoy themselves, they forget how awful things are and it helps them - it strengthens them to get through the day.

I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.

Doing abominations is against the law, particularly if the abominations are done while wearing a lobster bib.

I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.

I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.

What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now.

Humorists always sit at the children's table.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I would rather live on in my apartment.

Achilles only had an Achilles heel, I have an entire Achilles body.

Some people are funny, and some people are not funny. Many people who are not funny can make a living at it. You don't have to be great to make a living at it. Just like a doctor who doesn't have to be great can still make a living out of it.

When you are dead, it is hard to find the light switch.