Woody Allen
Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things.Collection: Fun
During the course of the year a number of ideas just come up automatically. I could be walking down the street. Or shaving. An idea will hit me and I'll write it down. Then, when I'm ready to write, I check my little matchbooks and napkins and find that it is good or it's pretty terrible. There are other times when I don't have any ideas and I'll go into a room and close the door and I sit and sweat it out for a day or a month and eventually I come up with [something].Collection: Writing
It has become harder and harder in the United States to make films unhampered by outside influences. I've always been able to steer clear of that and keep the business people out of my hair completely.Collection: Hair
I think, on both sides of the camera or the novel: Distraction. I'm obsessed with: Can I get this actress or my third act to work? I'm distracted. I'm interested in that so I don't sit home and think, "Gee, life is meaningless. We're all going to die. The universe is pulling apart at breakneck speed."Collection: Home
Jazz is a big thing with me. It's a very big passion of mine, to play it. I'm an amateur musician and I love everything about it. I was obsessed with jazz when I was 15 years old and I know a lot about it because I've loved it so much.Collection: Passion
I'm really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and the only thing I can do is my little gift [filmmaking] and do it the best I can, [...] which is cold comfort.Collection: Comfort
I have a number of symptoms that are neurotic and are constricting in the sense that if I had a brilliant idea for a film that had to be shot in Tulsa, OK I would tear it up and throw it away. Anything outside of New York, 'cause I can't exist in a hotel outside of my own home, I have to be in my own home and my own environment. This is a neurotic symptom that is constricting to my work even.Collection: New York
You are much more dependent on luck than you think. People say if you want to have a good relationship, you have to work at it. But you never hear it about anything you really like, about sailing or going to soccer games.Collection: Soccer
Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range, they tend to do one thing and do it very well, but it's limited.Collection: Comedian
If you pursue the other woman, it's a losing situation and it's not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you're allowed to, that's no good either. There's no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.Collection: Way
I was raised in a religious home. It was unreasonable enforced religion that turned me off it. It was a joyless, unpleasant, stupid, barbaric thing when I was a child and I've never gotten over that feeling. If you're talking about religion it's one thing; I don't hold Jewish religion with any more seriousness than I would any other.Collection: Religious
I'll work by myself for years and then I'll think it'll be fun to et one of my friends like Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath into a room and not be alone for the writing of the thing; to have the pleasure of taking walks and get lunch together; its sort of a fun process and then I do it and then I get back on my own for a while until I feel the need to do it again.Collection: Fun
The only thing that does change, to some degree, is [that] you have some life experiences, you suffer a certain amount and you incorporate that into your work. Not in the content of your work, but in the sensibility of your work. It's nothing that you try and do; it just happens. And if you're lucky, people buy tickets to see it, and if you're not lucky, [then] they don't like it. But that's all.Collection: People
As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.Collection: Long
I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist.Collection: Artist
I always feel, I guess being a product of the movies of the 40s where movies were the greatest things and screens were big and palaces were palaces and stars were larger than life that reality was so much inferior to what we felt was conceivably possible from what we had seen in the movies.Collection: Stars
I keep getting more and more ambitious. Over the years, to some degree, in some areas, I feel I've grown. In some areas, I made a fool of myself. In some areas, I think I can still do some funny things.Collection: Thinking
I wouldn't necessarily want to be a big muscular guy. It's nice to be gorgeous whether you're male or female assuming you don't lose whatever else you have.Collection: Nice
The Jewish culture - people that are Jewish have a certain cultural habit that they've formed and one of those habits is an appreciation of theater and music - these are cultural things one does associate with values that are promulgated by Jewish families. I think that's a good thing.Collection: Appreciation
Paris is particularly beautiful in the rain. It was just a nice experience for me, a pleasant experience, and I was able to present it to the world through my eyes, very subjectively - not realistically, but subjectively.Collection: Beautiful
I always write the same way. I always write with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen on my bed. And then I go and type it up afterwards. I've always done that. Those things become habitual.Collection: Writing
I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.Collection: Real
A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.Collection: Philosophy
I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back.Collection: Beautiful
I never wanted to or expected to make a film outside of New York. New York became very, very expensive. The same $18 million spent in Barcelona or Rome goes much further there.Collection: New York
Some people are funny, and some people are not funny. Many people who are not funny can make a living at it. You don't have to be great to make a living at it. Just like a doctor who doesn't have to be great can still make a living out of it.Collection: Doctors
Every time you make a movie it's a new and different experience. You learn very little from the past. So, I'm a little bit better than I was when I first started.Collection: Past
When you travel around the country, you see what a tough town New York is: rude, competitive, a town where good, logical ideas are ignored in favor of unworkable ones. And yet, all these other towns are so dead and boring compared to New York.Collection: Country
I'm a big believer in supporting the action on film with the appropriate music. It covers a multitude of sins. It's gotten me out of a lot of jams, over the years. So, music for me is a very big thing in films and I use it unashamedly.Collection: Years
Culturally speaking, I was raised in a Jewish household. In addition to the religious side of it, I was taught respect for books and learning and the higher professions like medicine and law and teaching.Collection: Religious
My experience creatively is different than my experience in life, for, as my father would say, the simple reason that you can't get hurt when everything goes wrong creatively.Collection: Hurt
There's a tacit agreement between myself and the audience that I will entertain them when they buy their ticket, and I've been the one that has screwed that up. Once in while I indulge myself and try something else, and I keep my fingers crossed that it will come out good and there'll be enough people who will enjoy it, but that doesn't often happen.Collection: Agreement
I can make films. And some of them come out good, and some of them come out better, and some of them come out worse. But I've been very lucky over the years to be able to sustain the length of career that I've had.Collection: Years
The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Forever
I hate the beach. I hate the sun. I'm pale and I'm redheaded. I don't tan - I stroke!Collection: Beach
I never thought I was doing anyone a favour by bringing children into the world. With people as cruel to each other as they are, it's a terrible proposition. The best of lives are sad and tragic. The best of them. My general conclusion is that it's not a nice thing to do. The world doesn't need it. The kid doesn't need it.Collection: Children
You make a film and always hope you're going make "Citizen Kane" or "The Bicycle Thief." You make the film, and for one reason or another, one clicks and one doesn't, but it's out of your control completely.Collection: Thieves
I was thrown out of NYU for cheating-with the deans wifeCollection: Cheating
It's funny. Maria Elena and I, we are meant for each other and not meant for each other, it's a contradiction.Collection: Barcelona
If I had my life to live over, I wish I could be a great pianist or something.Collection: Wish
That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.Collection: Art
Life is for the living.Collection: Life Is
Some of the best memories of my childhood that I have are the times that I played hooky from school so I could spend my days in the public library reading all the wonderful books at my disposal.Collection: Memories
Notes for a ballet, The Spell: ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman - unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes.Collection: Humorous
Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things.Collection: Science
Subjectivity is objective.Collection: Subjectivity
Your still searching for me in every woman. You'll always seek to duplicate what we had. You know it.Collection: Stills
I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates.Collection: Work