Woody Allen
When I naturally write a story and I feel that the guy is sitting across the table from the girl and flirting with her... I think, 'God, that can't be me' because I'm just too old for that part. You need a 30-year-old or a 35-year-old for that part. And so I've given myself less and less roles.Collection: Girl
Real life is generally much duller and inevitably sadder, most of the time. In film, you control everything that's going on, so you can indulge the most fantastic, romantic, escapist feelings and fantasies. You can do anything you want. That's why it's very seductive and pleasurable to earn your living making movies because you're not living in the real world.Collection: Real
You look up after many years and you find that a film has become a classic because it's meaningful to people and alive, decade after decade.Collection: Meaningful
You can't anticipate in the room the riches of what you encounter when you're location hunting for a movie.Collection: Hunting
I don't like to meet the actor and have a lot of conferences and talk about their sub-life and their off-screen life and their back stories and all that nonsense, because it never means anything.Collection: Mean
Once the movie's over, there's not much point. When the thing is edited, mixed, and color-corrected, and you've finished it... In my case, I never read anything about it, I never think about it.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes some of the best moments are contributed by the actors being creative, with their own improvisations.Collection: Creative
I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player.Collection: Sunday
The process of making films is so technically demanding that it's a distraction. You don't spend your time thinking about the philosophical content, which is often very depressing.Collection: Depressing
I don't rely on anybody except my own judgment. I don't get much input. I don't know if that's helped me or if I would be better off if I did rely on someone.Collection: Would Be
Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.Collection: Sarcastic
I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right.Collection: Fighting
I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.Collection: Thinking
As the author you know how you want it to appear on screen and it's always the content dictating the form.Collection: Want
I don't think my film style has changed. I'm doing the same kind of jokes I did when I was younger.Collection: Thinking
The audience is making the film and not the film-maker.Collection: Film
I can live in Paris for four months or London or, you know, Barcelona. These are places that are like New York. But I don't think I could live in many places. When I had to make a film in the United States I picked San Francisco because to me it's one of the great cities of America.Collection: New York
No one ever wants the whole script. I give the whole script to people who require the whole script but to those people who don't require the whole script I don't give it to them and no one cares. They're relieved not to have to read extra pages that they're not in.Collection: People
I write the script; nobody sees it, not the people that put the money in the picture. I cast who I want, and make the film. That's why I've always felt the only thing standing between me and greatness, is me. There's no excuse for me not to be great except that I'm not.Collection: Writing
I can do a limited amount of things and that's what I do and I feel comfortable doing it and I have no particular desire to do anything else as an actor.Collection: Desire
I have a limitless amount of great music at my disposal and it's very, very pleasurable because when the music goes on the film it's amazing how much it livens up the film and gives it an emotional kick in the pants, sort of.Collection: Emotional
I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.Collection: Writing
I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff... I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.Collection: Wall
I never knew what Amazon was. I've never seen any of those series, even on cable. I've never seen The Sopranos, or Mad Men. I'm out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there's Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.Collection: Basketball
Paris is a very exciting city. I learned about Paris the same way that Americans do: from the movies.Collection: Cities
I'm in show business. I'm not like a poor factory worker who'd been laid off.Collection: Poor
When I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.Collection: New York
I consider myself a completely lucky filmmaker. I've had nothing but good luck. Everything I've needed has come my way.Collection: Good Luck
I didn't go to Paris until I was a grown-up in 1965. And when I went to Paris, it was the Paris I knew only from American movies.Collection: Paris
I'm not a big believer in the sense of Jews having a monopoly on comedy.Collection: Comedy
I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.Collection: Age
The comedies are not a million laughs on the set. Its business and the dramas are business as well, really. When I'm writing it I struggle more with drama because I started out in comedy.Collection: Drama
I have great faith in the actors. When they improvise, it always sounds better than the stuff I write in my bedroom. When they improvise, they make it sound alive.Collection: Writing
I've had a very productive life. I've worked very hard, I've never fallen prey to depression. I'm not sure I could have done all of that without being in psychoanalysis.Collection: Productive Life
There are drawbacks in being famous too, but you can live with those. They're not life-threatening. If the paparazzi are outside your restaurant or your house - and actors make such a big thing of it and scurry into cars and drape things - you think they're going to be crucified or something. It's not a big deal. You can get used to that. It's not so terrible.Collection: Thinking
There's nothing good about getting older-absolutely nothing-because the amount of wisdom and experience you gain is negligible compared to what you lose. You do gain a couple of things-you gain a little bittersweet and sour wisdom from your heartbreaks and failures and things-but what you lose is so catastrophic in every way.Collection: Couple
If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe.Collection: Safety
If you aren't failing every now and then, you're probably playing it too safe.Collection: Safe
Of all human weakness obsession is the most dangerous. And the silliest.Collection: Weakness
Raised by two mothers...wow, most of us barely survive oneCollection: Mother
Life is short. Short, and not about anything except what you can touch and what touches you.Collection: Life Is Short
The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants.Collection: Country
We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices.Collection: Philosophical
That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives.Collection: Art
Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my nameCollection: Believe
I didn't know he was dead; I thought he was British.Collection: Funny
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion... no, make that: he - he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.Collection: New York
When I am in New York, I want to be in Europe, and when I am in Europe, I want to be in New York.Collection: New York
Psychoanalyses is like music lessons, for 5 years you do not notice any progress and suddenly you can play the piano.Collection: Music