Woody Allen Quotes & Sayings

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. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

The less I speak to the actors, the better. And I always hire great people, and I don't want to impose my pre-conceived notions on them. They know how to play it. — Woody Allen

Writing is great because you never have to meet the test of reality when you're writing. When I write the film is always a masterpiece at that point. I write and I make up things and budgets don't mean anything and it's great. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

It's just gossip, you know. Gossip is the new pornography. — Woody Allen

Nothing like a little post-traumatic stress disorder to make your day complete. — Woody Allen

Have you ever taken a serious political stand on anything? Yeah. Sure. For twenty-four hours once I refused to eat grapes. — Woody Allen

I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysenery. — Woody Allen

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

If I could only see one miracle, just one miracle. Like a burning bush, or the seas part, or my uncle Sasha pick up a check. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

I prefer the magic to reality, and have since I was 5 years old. Hopefully, I can continue to make films and constantly escape into them. — Woody Allen

I could turn on my radio in the morning when I was getting dressed for school and hear Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and think this is the music. Now that music is art. Ellington is art. At that time it was just what you heard on the radio. Cole Porter was just a guy who wrote pretty songs and Billie Holliday would sing them. — Woody Allen

Every hooker I ever speak to tells me that it beats the hell out of waitressing. — Woody Allen

As I've gotten older, the parts have diminished. I liked it when I was younger, I could always play the lead in the movie and I could do all the romantic scenes with the women, and it was fun and I liked to play that. Now, I'm older and I'm reduced to playing the backstage doorman or the uncle or something. I don't really love that so occasionally, when a part comes up, I'll play it. — Woody Allen

Sygmnd was a poor Austrian who'd lost all the vowels in his name in a boating accident. — Woody Allen

These modern analysts! They charge so much. In my day, for five marks Freud himself would treat you. For ten marks, he would treat you and press your pants. For fifteen marks, Freud would let you treat him, and that included a choice of any two vegetables. Thirty dollars an hour! Fifty dollars an hour! The Kaiser only got twelve and a quarter for being Kaiser! And he had to walk to work! And the length of treatment! Two years! Five years! If one of us couldn't cure a patient in six months we would refund his money, take him to any musical revue and he would receive either a mahogany fruit bowl or a set of stainless steel carving knives. I remember you could always tell the patients Jung failed with, as he would give them large stuffed pandas. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

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

If man were immortal, do you realize what his meat bills would be? ... — Woody Allen

Take the money and run. — Woody Allen

I've had a very productive life. I've worked very hard, I've never fallen prey to depression. I'm not sure I could have done all of that without being in psychoanalysis. — Woody Allen

Man cannot live by bread alone. Every once in awhile he needs a salad. — Woody Allen

When you work from city to city or country to country, you work the same way; the working method is the same. — Woody Allen

Drama is like meat and three veg. Whereas comedy is like the merangue at the end. — Woody Allen

What I do know about physics is that to a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat - especially if the man on the boat is with his wife. — Woody Allen

His face was knotted with rage. He felt like fainting but couldn't remember the proper way to fall. — Woody Allen

Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym. — Woody Allen

Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things. — Woody Allen

It's just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don't have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we're just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it's Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There'll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

In a relationship, it is better to be the leaver than the leavee. — Woody Allen

The prison psychiatrist asked me if I thought sex was dirty. I told him only when it's done right. — Woody Allen

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice. — Woody Allen

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

The dictatorship is shut up, democracy is always concerned. — Woody Allen

For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good. — Woody Allen

Some men are heterosexual and some men are bisexual and some men don't think about sex at all ... you know, they become lawyers. — Woody Allen

Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs. — Woody Allen

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

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. — Woody Allen

Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday night? — Woody Allen

People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer. — Woody Allen

In New York State they have a strange law that says you can't get a divorce unless you can prove adultery - and it's weird, because the Ten Commandments say 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But New York State says you have to. Well, finally, what happened was that my wife committed adultery for me. She's always been more mechanically inclined than I have. — Woody Allen

For God sakes, this is a woman I was married to for 10 years. We made love. I'd hold her head over the toilet bowl when she threw up. — Woody Allen

Manute Bol is so skinny they save money on road trips. They just fax him from city to city. — Woody Allen

History is the same thing over and over again. — Woody Allen

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors. — Woody Allen

Honey! Bring down a copy of my will - and an eraser! — Woody Allen

Eternity is really long, especially near the end. — Woody Allen

I have just spent the better part of a week sorting out the miasma of lunatic alibis known as your correspondence in an effort to adjust matters, that our game may be finished simply once and for all. — Woody Allen

What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn't for certain people. — Woody Allen

I am two with nature. — Woody Allen

This stuff tastes awful; I could have made a fortune selling it in my health-food store. — Woody Allen

I don't get depressed; I grow a tumor instead. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we with our capacity to love that fives meaning to the indifferent universe, and yet most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things. — Woody Allen

Well, if I don't get at least 16 hours, I'm a basket case. — Woody Allen

When we lose twenty pounds ... we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty. — Woody Allen

That's one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing's real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection - none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it's not much help to Truffaut. — Woody Allen

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

Sex on Twitter can't hurt you - unless you fall off. — Woody Allen

Years of insanity have made this guy crazy! — Woody Allen

I'm a teleological, existential agnostic. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

When I was born my mother was terribly disappointed. Not that she wanted a girl - she wanted a divorce. — Woody Allen

Raised by two mothers ... wow, most of us barely survive one — Woody Allen

Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

Life is hard for insects. And don't think mice are having any fun either. — Woody Allen

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

It's funny. Maria Elena and I, we are meant for each other and not meant for each other, it's a contradiction. — Woody Allen

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have. — Woody Allen

I can't even make a leap of faith to believe in my own existence. — Woody Allen

I didn't know he was dead; I thought he was British. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

You make films whether they're dramas or comedies about neurotic people. Flawed people. Interesting personality traits. To make them about calm, stable untroubled people isn't interesting. — Woody Allen

I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director. — Woody Allen

In the shower, with the hot water coming down, you've left the real world behind, and very frequently things open up for you. It's the change of venue, the unblocking the attempt to force the ideas that's crippling you when you're trying to write. — Woody Allen

I am plagued by doubts. — Woody Allen

Mankind is facing a crossroad - one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction - I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

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

Life's hard, then you die. — Woody Allen

You're so good looking I can barely keep my eyes on the meter. — Woody Allen

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a Quaker. — Woody Allen

I love nature, I just don't want to get any of it on me. — Woody Allen

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. — Woody Allen

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

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

I hate the beach. I hate the sun. I'm pale and I'm redheaded. I don't tan - I stroke! — Woody Allen

I'll work by myself for years and then I'll think it'll be fun to et one of my friends like Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath into a room and not be alone for the writing of the thing; to have the pleasure of taking walks and get lunch together; its sort of a fun process and then I do it and then I get back on my own for a while until I feel the need to do it again. — Woody Allen

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. — Woody Allen

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right. — Woody Allen

I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today. — Woody Allen

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me. — Woody Allen

The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. — Woody Allen