1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Woody Allen

Woody Allen Quotes
page 4

Heywood "Woody" Allen is an American director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. He began his career as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes, where he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian.By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s, and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some of the best-known of his over 50 films are Annie Hall , Manhattan , Hannah and Her Sisters , Crimes and Misdemeanors , and Midnight in Paris . In 2007 he said Stardust Memories , The Purple Rose of Cairo , and Match Point were his best films. Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema".Allen has received many accolades and honors. He has won four Academy Awards: three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director. He also garnered nine British Academy Film Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the "101 Funniest Screenplays". In 2011 PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen: A Documentary on its series American Masters. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. December 1935
Woody Allen photo
Woody Allen: 229 quotes31 likes

Woody Allen Quotes

“I bought her this handkerchief… and I didn't even know her size.”

Woody Allen

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

“The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films… They can’t afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you’re getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes…”

Woody Allen

BBC radio interview (2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-JHO9BoJM.

“Burt: Do you care even about the Holocaust or do you think it never happened?Harry: Not only do I know that we lost six million, but the scary thing is that records are made to be broken.”

Woody Allen

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

“She quarreled with the nanny and accused her of brushing Misha's teeth sideways rather than up and down.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“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.”

Woody Allen

Love and Death (1975)

“When it comes to sex there are certain things that should always be left unknown, and with my luck, they probably will be.”

Woody Allen

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

“Allen: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Woman: Yes, it is.
Allen: What does it say to you?
Woman: 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.
Allen: What are you doing Saturday night?
Woman: Committing suicide.
Allen: What about Friday night?”

Woody Allen

Play It Again, Sam (1972).

“Harry: Between the Pope and air conditioning, I'd choose air conditioning.”

Woody Allen

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

“I had dated a woman briefly in the Eisenhower administration, and it was ironic to me, because I was trying to do to her what Eisenhower had been doing to the country for the last 8 years.”

Woody Allen

Annie Hall (1977)

“[about his daughter] I'd rather she grew up here than grew up as an orphan, you know I can tolerate anybody's orphans but my own.”

Woody Allen Don't Drink the Water

Don't Drink the Water (1994)

“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 book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“I was supremely confident my flair for atmosphere and characterization would sparkle alongside the numbing mulch ground out by studio hacks. Certainly the space atop my mantel might be better festooned by a gold statuette than by the plastic dipping bird that now bobbed there ad infinitum.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“My relationship with death remains the same - I'm strongly against it,
All I can do is wait for it”

Woody Allen

Ibid. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8684809.stm

“…years of insanity have made this guy crazy!”

Woody Allen Don't Drink the Water

Don't Drink the Water (1994)

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

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“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.”

Woody Allen

New York Times interview (2010) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/movies/15woody.html?_r=1&ref=arts#.

“They called me mad… But it was I - yes I - who discovered the link between excessive masturbation and entry into politics!”

Woody Allen

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

“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.”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

Side Effects (1980), My Apology

“I can't get with any religion that advertises in Popular Mechanics.”

Woody Allen

Annie Hall (1977)

“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.”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

Side Effects (1980), My Apology

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

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"The Early Essays".
Without Feathers (1975)

“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.”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

Side Effects (1980), My Apology

“With that, he scribbled in an additional ninety thousand dollars on the estimate, which had waxed to the girth of the Talmud while rivaling it in possible interpretations.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“I have also reviewed my own financial obligations, which have puffed up recently like a hammered thumb.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“Bidnick gorges himself on Viagra, but the dosage makes him hallucinate and causes him to imagine he is Pliny the Elder.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“Rabbi Raditz of Poland was a very short rabbi with a long beard, who was said to have inspired many pogroms with his sense of humor. One of his disciples asked, "Who did God like better, Moses or Abraham?"
"Abraham," the Zaddik said.
"But Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land," said the disciple.
"All right, so Moses," the Zaddik answered.”

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"Hassidic Tales, with A Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar"
Without Feathers (1975)

“In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went.”

Woody Allen

Love and Death (1975)

“I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”

Woody Allen book Getting Even

"Conversations with Helmholtz"
Getting Even (1971)

“We have to take our possessions and flee. I'm very good at that. I was the men's freestyle fleeing champion two years in a row.”

Woody Allen

Love and Death (1975)

“Cookie: What are you sad about?Harry: I'm spiritually bankrupt. I'm empty.Cookie: What do you mean?Harry: I'm frightened. I got no soul, you know what I mean? Let me put it this way: when I was younger it was less scary waiting for Lefty than it is waiting for Godot.Cookie: You lost me!Harry: You know that the universe is coming apart? You know about that? You know what a black hole is?Cookie: Yeah. That's how I make my living.”

Woody Allen

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

“This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life: I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have, since I was a little boy. It hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience, and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.”

Woody Allen

Press conference for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger at the Cannes Film Festival (2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yVPS8XBoBE&feature=related.

“And so I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Actually, make that "I run through the valley of the shadow of death" - in order to get OUT of the valley of the shadow of death more quickly, you see.”

Woody Allen

Love and Death (1975)

“Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.”

Woody Allen

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

“I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia”

Woody Allen

Attributed to Allen by Herb Caen in Reader's Digest, October 1967. For additional citations see this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/08/speed-reading/.

“What has gotten into you lately? Save a little craziness for menopause!”

Woody Allen

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

“[The universe is] haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.”

Woody Allen

September (1987).

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

Woody Allen

Standup Comic (1999)

“We're worth a lot of dough. Whatever you see is antiques. This thing here. This is from — I don't remember exactly. I think it's the Renaissance or the Magna Carta or something. But that's where it's from.”

Woody Allen

Small Time Crooks (2001).

“It figures you’ve got to hate yourself if you’ve got any integrity at all.”

Woody Allen

Quoted by Douglas Brode in Woody Allen – His Films and Career (1985).

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

Woody Allen

Standup Comic (1999)

“I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers.”

Woody Allen

Sleeper (1973)

“What a wonderful thing, to be conscious! I wonder what the people in New Jersey do.”

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"No Kaddish for Weinstein".
Without Feathers (1975)

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

Woody Allen Without Feathers

&quot; Death (A Play) http://books.google.com/books?id=qjRaAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22It&#x27;s+not+that+I&#x27;m+afraid+to+die+I+just+don&#x27;t+want+to+be+there+when+it+happens%22&amp;pg=PA99#v=onepage&quot;. <br class="br">Without Feathers (1975)

“You start to think, when you’re younger, how important everything is and how things have to go right—your job, your career, your life, your choices, and all of that. Then, after a while, you start to realise that – I’m talking the big picture here – eventually you die, and eventually the sun burns out and the earth is gone, and eventually all the stars and all the planets in the entire universe go, disappear, and nothing is left at all. Nothing – Shakespeare and Beethoven and Michelangelo gone. And you think to yourself that there’s a lot of noise and sound and fury – and where’s it going? It’s not going any place… Now, you can’t actually live your life like that, because if you do you just sit there and – why do anything? Why get up in the morning and do anything? So I think it’s the job of the artist to try and figure out why, given this terrible fact, you want to go on living.”

Woody Allen

Interview with France 24 (2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MsuqvLIttk.

“Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!”

Woody Allen

What's New, Pussycat? (1965).

“How could I not have known that there are little things the size of "Planck length" in the universe, which are a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter? Imagine if you dropped one in a dark theater how hard it would be to find.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.”

Woody Allen

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982).

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

Woody Allen book Getting Even

Getting Even (1971), My Philosophy

“Death is like a colonoscopy, the problem is that life is like the prep day.”

Woody Allen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQqYu37GjTg

“Taste my tuna casserole — tell me if I put in too much hot fudge.”

Woody Allen

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)