Woody Allen citations

Page 6

“Le sexe est la chose la plus amusante que vous puissiez avoir sans même rire.”

“La confiance est ce que vous avez avant de comprendre le problème, et après l'avoir résolu.”

“Huit pour cent du succès se manifeste.”

“Si vous n'échouez pas de temps en temps, c'est un signe que vous ne faites rien de ouf”

“Dieu est silencieux. Maintenant, si seulement l'homme se taisait. Pour devenir dieu?”

“Faire son chemin dans la vie n'est pas simple et tout ce qui peut marcher sans nuire à autrui est une bonne chose”

“[…] si j'étais un homme d'État grec, je ne ferais jamais confiance aux Troyens. As-tu remarqué qu'ils ne prennent jamais de vacances?”

“Je suis ouvert d'esprit sur le sexe je ne suis pas irréprochable. Pour tout dire, je suis au delà des reproches, de que je veux dire. Si j'étais pris demain dans une partouze avec douze petites-filles, les gens penseraient, oui, j'ai toujours su ça de lui. Rien de ce que je pourrais dévoiler ne surprendrait qui que ce soit … Je reconnais tout.”

“Non seulement la vie est horrible, mais en plus elle est courte.”

“Du côté positif, mourir est une des rares choses que l'on puisse faire aussi bien couché que debout.”

“Selon moi, le cinéma a eu deux artistes fondamentaux : Orson Welles et Stanley Kubrick.”

“Non seulement Dieu n'existe pas, mais essayez d'avoir un plombier pendant le week-end!”

“Je ne connais pas la question, mais le sexe est définitivement la réponse.
Une obsession je crois”

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

“I like the rain. It washes memories off the sidewalk of life.”

“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.”

“You're still in love'
'No I'm not, I'm not She'll always be a part of me, and she's an important person in my life but for the two of us something wasn't working.'
'What element?'
'We never found out”

“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.”

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

“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…”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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?”

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

“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.”