Woody Allen Quotes

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“Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.”

“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.”

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

“I don't know what I'm doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm.”

“Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.”

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

“Raised by two mothers… wow, most of us barely survive one”

“I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty.”

“Our love, our love will last forever. It's forever but it just doesn't work. That's why it will always be romantic because it can not be complete.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If He was a carpenter, I wondered what He charged for bookshelves.”

“How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not "the thing with feathers." The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.”

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

“Anything worth knowing cannot be understood by the human mind.”

“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.”

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

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

“She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.”

“Because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine.”

“I believe people ought to mate for life… like pigeons or Catholics.”

“You'll find as you go through life that great depth and smoldering sensuality don't always win.”

“You can't ride two horses with one behind.”

“[…] I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day.”

“I failed to make the chess team because of my height.”

“Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.”

“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.”

“The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.”

“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.”

“Is Knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know?”

“When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.”

“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?”

“Sex and death. Two things that come but once in my lifetime, but at least after death you're not nauseous.”

“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've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion…. but it won't get much sleep.”

“Doris: You have no values. With you it's all nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm.Harry: Hey, in France I could run for office with that slogan, and win!”

“Woody Allen later wrote in a letter: "My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel, he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book. In the midst of the conversation, as I’m now trying to recall, I did say that 80 percent of success is showing up."”

“As we know, for centuries Rome regarded the Open Hot Turkey Sandwich as the height of licentiousness.”

“Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. It was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service.”

“What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn't for certain people.”

“I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.”

“I'm not saying I didn't enjoy myself, but I didn't.”

“Harry: No, I don't think you're paranoid. I think you're the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you.”

“I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say [sic] my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.”

“There have been times when I've thought of suicide but with my luck it'd probably be a temporary solution.”

“I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.”

“You know, the whole American culture is going down the drain, you can't turn on a television set and see anything, or walk in the street and not find garbage, or neighborhoods that were formerly beautiful now have McDonald's in them, and it's all a part of an enormous degeneration of culture in the United States. People that exist in that culture are forced to make moral decisions all the time about their lives, their occupations, their love-lives, and they make decisions that are commensurate with what's happening to them in this culture, and it's too bad that that's happening because that's what Manhattan is about, that New York used to be such a great city, so wonderful, and it has to fight every day for its survival against the encroachment of all this terrible ugliness that is gradually overcoming all the big cities in America.
This ugliness comes from a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life. They don't know what they're doing, or why they're here. They have no religious center, they have no philosophical center, and so they act, they do what's expedient at the moment. They have no long view of society. They only have the view of quick money, and kill the pain of the moment, and so instead of dealing with the real problems that exist, that are complicated, they sweep them under the rug by turning on the television set, or taking cocaine, or doing many things that enable them to escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world.”

“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.”