Woody Allen
As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?Collection: Jobs
But what if everyone in the world behaved like me and came here and shot Brisseau through the ear? What a mess! And of course we'd need valet parking.Collection: What If
It's hard for me to know. I'll think, 'I really brought off my ideas, it's great,' and no one sparks to itCollection: Thinking
It's all through the actors; I cannot write in that idiomCollection: Writing
Then Job fell to his knees and cried to the Lord, "Thine is the kingdom and the power and glory. Thou hast a good job. Don't blow it."Collection: Funny
I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats. (On the KKK)Collection: Baseball
I can't even make a leap of faith to believe in my own existence.Collection: Faith
One man starving puts a crimp in my evening.Collection: Men
Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?Collection: Crime
There are three things Jewish people worship-God, Chinese food and wall-to-wall carpeting.Collection: Wall
If you're not failing, you're not trying anything.Collection: Failure
I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.Collection: Regret
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.Collection: Sex
90% of success in life is showing upCollection: Showing Up
I have a great admiration for English actors and actresses and have used them at every opportunity over the years, but now I won't have to import them to New York.Collection: New York
Music has always helped my films. In 'The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion,' you can hear 'Sunrise' by Glenn Miller, an idol of my childhood, in the surprise ending. I like mixing comedy with suspense and action.Collection: Idols
The dictatorship is shut up, democracy is always concerned.Collection: Democracy
Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.Collection: People
Because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine.Collection: Hero
The audience goes to sleep really quickly! If you have a slight pause at the wrong time, that's it!Collection: Sleep
I like filming in New York a lot myself, but London is accommodating to me; the weather's very good there and the conditions for shooting and the financial conditions, the artistic conditions are good, so it's a pleasant place to shoot.Collection: New York
In real life I'm not the character I play in my films. I'm reasonably competent, I work very hard, I'm disciplined, I lead a very middle class life. I work in the mornings, I have lunch, I practise my clarinet, I go to the movies, I eat out in restaurants or watch ball games on television or at the ball games.Collection: Morning
I feel humor is important for those two reasons: that it is a little bit of refreshment like music, and that women have told me over the years that it is very, very important to them.Collection: Years
When I first started, there were writers that I looked up to that I felt very influenced by and very respectful toward their work and their opinion of my work.Collection: Firsts
If the [actors] are working, and I have a dinner engagement, I don't do 20 takes. I do five takes and go home. I want to go to dinner.Collection: Home
I'd like to make a great movie. I've made many movies. I think I've made some good movies, but I never felt I've made a great movie.Collection: Thinking
I've been lucky because my films have consistently made a profit, almost all of them have made a profit. Never a huge profit, but nobody gets hurt. And therefore I get a lot of freedom.Collection: Hurt
I've always believed that thoughtful people don't really take the tabloids seriously. They're basically a form of entertainment. I enjoy them as much as the next New Yorker.Collection: Thoughtful
I think I've gotten technically better over the years but you'd have to be a fool not to. I've made so many movies that by sheer quantity you get better at the technique.Collection: Thinking
I've always been interested in being in other people's movies. I never get any offers.Collection: People
I'd always wanted to be a dramatic. Comedy comes more naturally to me. I can do it with more facility. So I feel more comfortable with it.Collection: Comedy
Drama, it would be as if you wrote some poetry. You'd run the risk of being embarrassed if people read it, because you're pouring your heart out and you're not mitigating it with any humor or anything.Collection: Running
I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director.Collection: Directors
I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.Collection: Writing
To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.Collection: Writing
I'm a creature of the New York City streets.Collection: New York
The content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film - as in Husbands and Wives - is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, nervous New York film, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance.Collection: Editing
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 outCollection: Two
There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?Collection: Witty
A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates.Collection: Men
After 60, all of us belong to the weaker sex.Collection: Sex
I've inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father's hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother's surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.Collection: Mother
While we're waiting for a cab I'll give you your lesson for today. Don't listen to what your teachers tell ya, you know. Don't pay attention. Just, just see what they look like and that's how you'll know what life is really gonna be like.Collection: Teacher
Sex on Twitter can't hurt you - unless you fall off.Collection: Anniversary
I think [aging] has nothing to recommend it. You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.Collection: Nice
Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.Collection: Air
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.Collection: Funny
I wouldn't mind dying so much if it wasn't that I would be dead at the end of it.Collection: Mind
Some women feel power is important, some women feel that looks are important, tenderness, intelligence...but sense of humor seems to permeate all of them.Collection: Important