Woody Allen

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Woody Allen (born 1 December 1935) American Film director, writer, musician, actor, and comedian; born Allen Stewart Königsberg.

1 Sourced
2 Attributed
3 See also
4 External links

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Sourced

This is so antiseptic. It's empty. Why do you think this is funny? You're going by audience reaction? This is an audience that's raised on television, their standards have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white cells of their brains out!
- Manhattan (1979)

Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.
- Manhattan (1979)

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
- A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)

Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do ... I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.
- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 [...] it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.
- Interview in Der Spiegel, June 20, 2005 (as quoted by the New York Post) [1]

I think that people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.
- Manhattan (1979)

Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!
- What's New, Pussycat?

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Getting Even (1971)

I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
- "Conversations with Helmholtz"

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My Philosophy

Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.

It is impossible to experience one's own death objectively and still carry a tune.

Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you're dressed for it.

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

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Sleeper (1973)

My brain; it's my second favorite organ.
I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers.

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Love and Death (1975)

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.

Human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun.

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns about that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever.

After all, there are worse things in life than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I'm talking about.

The key is, to not think of death as an end, but as more of a very effective way to cut down on your expenses.

Regarding love... what can you say? It's not the quantity of your sexual relations that counts. It's the quality. On the other hand if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it.

"I had to live many years, and, after many trials and tribulations, I have come to the conclusion that the best thing [in life] is ... blonde 12-year-old girls. Two of them, whenever possible."

Where did you go to finishing school? On a pirate ship?

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Without Feathers (1976)

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.
- "The Early Essays"

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
- "The Early Essays"

The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife -- a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held.
- "The Early Essays"

What a wonderful thing, to be conscious! I wonder what the people in New Jersey do.
- "No Kaddish for Weinstein"

Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
- "Selections from the Allen Notebooks"

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- "Selections from the Allen Notebooks"

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
- "Selections from the Allen Notebooks"

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

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

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?

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Annie Hall (1977)

Don't knock masturbation — it's sex with someone I love.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

There's an old joke... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life — full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness — and it's all over much too quickly.

The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious", and it goes like this — I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

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Side Effects (1981)

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
- "The UFO Menace"

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.
- "The UFO Menace"

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.
- "My Speech to the Graduates"

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My Apology

Woody Allen as Socrates...

Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around a Swedish airline stewardess and some handcuffs.

Death is a state of non-being. That which is not, does not exist. Therefore death does not exist. Only truth exists. Truth and beauty. Each is interchangeable, but are aspects of themselves. Er, what specifically did they say they had in mind for me?

Hey listen — I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.

Agathon: But all that talk about death being the same as sleep.
Socrates: Yes, the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, "Everybody up, it's morning," it's very hard to find your slippers.

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Standup Comic (1999)

A CD compilation of Allen comedy routines from 1964-1968

A lot of things have happened in my private life recently that I thought we could review tonight.

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

I was in analysis. I was suicidal. As a matter of fact, I would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss.

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

I'm not a drinker — my body will not tolerate spirits. I had two Martinis on New Year's Eve and I tried to hijack an elevator and fly it to Cuba.

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

I idolized Superman when I was younger. I thought he and I had a lot in common. He was always going into phonebooths and taking off all his clothes.

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Attributed

A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said 'no'.

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

Between air conditioning and the pope I take air conditioning.

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

God is either cruel or incompetent.

His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.

How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?

How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.

I am at two with nature.

I can't express anger. That's my problem. I just grow a tumor instead.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

I do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without being brainwashed into it or suckered into it by all the organized hustles.
- Rolling Stone, 1987

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

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

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

I think crime pays. The hours are good, you travel a lot.

I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead -- not sick, not wounded -- dead.

I'm such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse

"If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right."

"If my film makes one more person feel miserable, I'll feel like I've done my job."

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.

Life is like a concentration camp... you can't leave without dying.

"Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions."

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

My love life is terrible. The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

Sex is only dirty if it's done right.

Sex without love is an empty experience. But as far as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

The government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under 5' 7", it is impossible to get your congressman on the phone.

The two biggest myths about me are that I'm an intellectual, because I wear these glasses, and that I'm an artist because my films lose money. Those two myths have been prevalent for many years.