Woody Allen
Is old age really so terrible? Not if you've brushed your teeth faithfully.Collection: Maturity
I'm awash in self-contempt!Collection: Sad
I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today.Collection: Mistake
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.Collection: Inspirational
Sex and death. Two things that come but once in my lifetime, but at least after death you're not nauseous.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Years
Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs.Collection: Baseball
If I can play a scene in a master shot, I always prefer it. And the actors always prefer it. It's fun to look at on the screen, the actors get a chance to sink their teeth into something substantial, and it's economically helpful.Collection: Fun
When you make the film, there's a big difference between when you're in your own home at the typewriter, and when you're standing on a mountain, or on a street corner, and buses are coming by-it's a different reality. You make a million changes that were never in the script, but that reality dictates.Collection: Home
Should I marry W? Not if she won't tell me the other letters in her name. And what about her career? How can I ask a woman of her beauty to give up the Roller Derby? Decisions...Collection: Marriage
There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a microscope.Collection: Discovery
You always think another time would have been ideal for you . . . the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist.Collection: Reality
You're a genius! And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent.Collection: People
Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?Collection: Play
Gauguin flew into a frenzy! He held my head under the X-ray machine for ten straight minutes and for several hours after I could not blink my eyes in unison." — "If The Impressionists Had Been DentistsCollection: Eye
There is dignity in suffering; nobility in pain; but failure is a salted wound, that burns and burns again!Collection: Wise
I don't mind dying... as long as I don't have to be there when it happens.Collection: Long
I've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.Collection: Sleep
Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.Collection: Sex
I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects. It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given fingerpaints.Collection: Writing
I always thought that as long as man is mortal, he will never be relaxed.Collection: Men
When you start putting a higher value on works of art than people, you’re forfeiting your humanity.Collection: Art
It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to. Writing is very pleasurable, very seductive, and very therapeutic. Time passes very fast when I'm writing-really fast. I'm puzzling over something, and time just flies by. It's an exhilarating feeling. How bad can it be? It's sitting alone with fictional characters. You're escaping from the world in your own way and that's fine. Why not?Collection: Character
My films are a form of psychoanalysis, except that it is I who am paid, which changes everything.Collection: Change
Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants.Collection: Cutting
For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good.Collection: Home
The French make two mistakes about me. They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money.Collection: Artist
When a film is reviled, you open a film and people say "Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie." You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say "Oh, they hated your film." You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares.Collection: Thinking
Dying is like making love, except you don't get naseous afterwards.Collection: Making Love
I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.Collection: Funny
With me; it's just a genetic dissatisfaction with everything.Collection: Dissatisfaction
I can't understand why more people aren't bisexual. It would double your chances for a date on Saturday night.Collection: Sex
The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.Collection: Funny
Do I believe in God? I did until Mother's accident. She fell on some meat loaf and it penetrated her spleen.Collection: Mother
I can't do anything to death, doctor's orders.Collection: Doctors
You know what my philosophy of life is? That it’s important to have some laughs, but you got to suffer a little too, because otherwise you miss the whole point to life.Collection: Philosophy
I usually want to crawl into the ground after I make a film, almost invariably.Collection: Want
We knew the front door was always left open, but we broke in just to keep in practice. Doxy turned all the Washburn family photos to the wall so there wouldn't be any witnesses.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Zurich
I believe in sex and death- two experiences that come once in a lifetime.Collection: Sex
Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.Collection: Simple
I can't enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.Collection: Guy
Show business is dog eat dog. It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls.Collection: Dog
I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.Collection: Summer
Should I marry W.? Not if she won't tell me the other letters in her name.Collection: Funny
I cannot say for certain that God does not exist; I think the worst thing that can be said about him is that he's a bit of an underachiever.Collection: Thinking
Child molestation is a touchy subject... Read the papers! Half the country's doing it!Collection: Country
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.Collection: Uncles