Woody Allen Quotes

‘Join the army, see the world, meet interesting people – and kill ‘em.’

‘I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.’

‘I’m not afraid of dying . . . I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’

‘There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?’

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

‘If my film makes one more person miserable, I’ll feel I’ve done my job.’

‘If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.’

‘To you, I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.’

‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.’

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

‘If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.’

 

‘I had a line in one of my movies – “Everyone knows the same truth.” Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it. One person will distort it with a kind of wishful thinking like religion, someone else will distort it by thinking political solutions are going to do something, someone else will think a life of sensuality is going to do it, someone else will think art transcends. Art for me has always been the Catholicism of the intellectuals. There is no afterlife for the Catholics really, and there’s no afterlife for the arts. “Your painting lived on after you” – well, that doesn’t really do it. That’s not what you want. Even if your painting does have some longevity, eventually that’s going to go. There won’t be any works of William Shakespeares or Lugwig van Beethovan, or any theatre to see them in, or air or light. I’ve always felt you’ve got to live your life within the context of this worst-case scenario. Which is true; the worst-case scenario is here.’

 

‘With my complexion I don’t tan, I stroke.’

‘Life is for the living.’

‘My brain: It’s my second favorite organ.’

‘I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I’m bringing along a change of underwear.’

‘It’s true I had a lot of anxiety. I was afraid of the dark and suspicious of the light.’

‘I was thrown out of NYU for cheating on my Metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.’

‘80% of success is showing up.’

‘Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.’

‘I think there is too much wrong with the world to ever get too relaxed and happy. The more natural state, and the better one, I think, is one of some anxiety and tension over man’s plight in this mysterious universe.’