Woody Allen famous quotes

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
-- Woody Allen

#Inspirational #Positive #Inspiring

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Agreement #People #Trying

Men learn to love the woman they are attracted to. Women learn to become attracted to the man they fall in love with.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Falling In Love #Humorous

I don't believe in competition for artistic things. I just like the atmosphere of the Cannes festival. I don't want to win anything or lose anything.
-- Woody Allen

#Believe #Winning #Competition

I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.
-- Woody Allen

#Life #Sex #Answers

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.
-- Woody Allen

#Real #People #Actors

The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to these things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that.
-- Woody Allen

#Best Love #Falling In Love #Heart

I never have an alter ego in the movies. That's a fiction that the press has made up over the years, and it's fun to write that. It gives them something to write.
-- Woody Allen

#Fun #Writing #Years

I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.
-- Woody Allen

#Relationship #Moving #Thinking

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Hair #People #United States

I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Sunday #Player #Tennis

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Confidence #Witty

There's something about my films; they're informed by my sensibility. I have the same preoccupations, the same interests... there's just something in the nuance, and so you always know it's a film of mine whether I sign my name to it or not.
-- Woody Allen

#Names #Nuance #Film

The study of economy usually shows us that the best time for purchase was last year.
-- Woody Allen

#Years #Lasts #Study

I always felt that the problems of the world would never ever be solved until people came to terms with the deeper issues [spiritual] - that there would be an aimless reshuffling of world leaders and governments and programs.
-- Woody Allen

#Spiritual #Government #Issues

Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes.
-- Woody Allen

#Love Is #Two #Weak

When I was young, I wanted to be a dramatic writer, a writer of tragedy. Nothing would've pleased me more than if I could have written like Eugene O'Neil or Tennessee Williams.
-- Woody Allen

#Tragedy #Tennessee #Dramatic

You can't control life. It doesn't wind up perfectly. Only-only art you can control. Art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert.
-- Woody Allen

#Art #Wind #Two

I've often felt that life is a hard deal and it's unrelentingly tragic and an uphill fight.
-- Woody Allen

#Fighting #Life Is #Tragic

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

#Funny #Witty #Money

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.
-- Woody Allen

#Writing #Years #Done

I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Humorous #Paris

Please forgive me. My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe. It required bandaging.
-- Woody Allen

#Orange #Forgive Me #Forgiving

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Time #Inspiration

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Food #Oysters

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Real #Issues #Punishment

Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.
-- Woody Allen

#Sex #Fun #Laughing

A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.
-- Woody Allen

#Philosophy #Believe #Character

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Teacher #Witty

There is no justice, there is no rational structure to it [life]. That is just the way it is, and each person figures out some way to cope with it...
-- Woody Allen

#Justice #Way #Figures

Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.
-- Woody Allen

#School #Class #Advice

If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life [than a non-believer].
-- Woody Allen

#Believe #Bail #Santa

Sentence structure is innate, but whining is acquired.
-- Woody Allen

#Whining #Structure #Sentences

Everybody knows how awful the world is and each person distorts it in a certain way that enables him to get through. Some people distort it with religious things, others with sports, money, love, art, and they all have their own nonsense about what makes it meaningful, and all but nothing makes it meaningful. These things definitely serve a certain function, but in the end they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way.
-- Woody Allen

#Meaningful #Sports #Religious

In the shower, with the hot water coming down, you've left the real world behind, and very frequently things open up for you. It's the change of venue, the unblocking the attempt to force the ideas that's crippling you when you're trying to write.
-- Woody Allen

#Real #Writing #Ideas

Life is horrible, but it is not relentlessly black from wire to wire. You can sit down and hear a Mozart symphony, or you can watch the Marx Brothers, and this will give you a pleasant escape for a while. And that is about the best that you can do.
-- Woody Allen

#Brother #Symphony #Giving

I can't with any conscience argue for New York with anyone. It's like Calcutta. But I love the city in an emotional, irrational way, like loving your mother or your father even though they're a drunk or a thief. I've loved the city my whole life - to me, it's like a great woman.
-- Woody Allen

#Mother #New York #Father

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Years #Two #Important

All i have in my life is my imagination
-- Woody Allen

#Imagination #Life Is #My Imagination

It seems to me that making escapist films might be a better service to people than making intellectual ones and making films that deal with issues. It might be better to just make escapist comedies that don't touch on any issues. The people just get a cool lemonade, and then they go out refreshed, they enjoy themselves, they forget how awful things are and it helps them - it strengthens them to get through the day.
-- Woody Allen

#Issues #People #Intellectual

All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that.
-- Woody Allen

#Mean #Ideas #Literature

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Littles #Comfort #Cold

I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Humorous #Conquer

Human existence is a brutal experience to me... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it [salvation] is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most.
-- Woody Allen

#Oasis #Agony #Delight

It's a match made in heaven...by a retarded angel.
-- Woody Allen

#Love #Sarcastic #Angel

The audience goes to sleep really quickly! If you have a slight pause at the wrong time, that's it!
-- Woody Allen

#Sleep #Wrong Time #Audience

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.
-- Woody Allen

#Knowledge #Rivers #Drink

Years ago I was on television having a discussion with Billy Graham about atheism. He was saying, even if you're right and I'm wrong, and there's nothing after, I will have had a better life than you, because I do believe there was something. And I couldn't argue with that, even though I wanted to.
-- Woody Allen

#Believe #Years #Atheism

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Life #Miserable

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.
-- Woody Allen

#Night #Luck #Lasts

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Running #Drama #Heart

Tradition is the illusion of permanance.
-- Woody Allen

#Tradition #Illusion

I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director.
-- Woody Allen

#Directors #Would Be #Film

Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen.
-- Woody Allen

#Dinner #Tvs #Frozen

People say that death is a part of life and there must be something to it, but I just see it as bad news and I want everybody to stop sugarcoating it.
-- Woody Allen

#People #News #Want

Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.
-- Woody Allen

#Thinking #Ideas #Notion

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Depressing #Philosophical #Thinking

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Girl #Crazy

My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.
-- Woody Allen

#Writing #People #Stupidity

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Art #Jobs

That's the way I feel about the world: there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way - going out and doing them. As ugly a truth as that is, I do think it's the truth about the world.
-- Woody Allen

#Thinking #World #Ugly

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.
-- Woody Allen

#Drama #Humor #Potatoes

When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.
-- Woody Allen

#Writing #Play

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
-- Woody Allen

#Sex #Humorous #Masturbation

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Girl #Writing #Flirting

Me sitting down for dinner with Ingmar Bergman felt like a house painter sitting down with Picasso.
-- Woody Allen

#House #Sitting #Dinner

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Drama #Struggle #Writing

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.
-- Woody Allen

#Funny #Science #Space

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Comedy #Dramatic #Feels

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Humorous #Greatness

Relationships are really what interest me the most. And I think, in the end, they interest most people the most. Even when you read Tolstoy or something, basically they're about man and woman relationships.
-- Woody Allen

#Men #Thinking #People

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.
-- Woody Allen

#Humorous #Science #Light

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Age #Frightened #Terrible

It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.
-- Woody Allen

#Dance #Writing #World

I believe people ought to mate for life...like pigeons or Catholics.
-- Woody Allen

#Believe #People #Catholic

I usually want to crawl into the ground after I make a film, almost invariably.
-- Woody Allen

#Want #Film

Paranoia is knowing all the facts.
-- Woody Allen

#Knowing #Facts #Paranoia

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Writing #Expression #Want

Why not? Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain - and this is a chance for something special.
-- Woody Allen

#Pain #Short Life #Life Is Short

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Wall #Trying #Actors

You'll find as you go through life that great depth and smoldering sensuality don't always win.
-- Woody Allen

#Winning #Depth #Sensuality

For some reason it gives people pleasure to equate the life of certain movie actors or actresses with their actual lives.
-- Woody Allen

#Giving #People #Actors

All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.
-- Woody Allen

#Inspiring #Witty #Funny Inspirational

It's easier to direct. If you direct something poorly and re-shoot it the next day, stage it better, make it work better, you have a lot of possibilities. You can edit it in certain ways so that it works, but there's no getting around weaknesses of the script.
-- Woody Allen

#Way #Next #Scripts

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.
-- Woody Allen

#People #Film #Baskets

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Thinking #Color #Cases

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.
-- Woody Allen

#Philosophy #Laughing #Missing

As the author you know how you want it to appear on screen and it's always the content dictating the form.
-- Woody Allen

#Want #Form

I love nature, I just don't want to get any of it on me.
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Humorous #Want

The content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance.
-- Woody Allen

#Editing #Style #Shooting

Until you've been kissed on a rainy Parisian afternoon - you've never been kissed.
-- Woody Allen

#Afternoon #Never Been Kissed #Rainy

If I had my choice in life I would have had the gifts of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill. Unfortunately my gifts lie in comedy and so comedy comes fairly easy to me and I occasionally have an idea for a very serious piece and I do it, but the ideas don't come that readily to me.
-- Woody Allen

#Lying #Ideas #Choices

he's a genius, she's a genius, wow, you know alot of geniuses, you should meet some stupid people sometime, you might learn something
-- Woody Allen

#Witty #Stupid #Humorous

Many people who get a lot of money are willing to work with me for no money. This is true.
-- Woody Allen

#People #No Money #Willing

Anything worth knowing cannot be understood by the human mind.
-- Woody Allen

#Knowing #Mind #Humans

The audience is making the film and not the film-maker.
-- Woody Allen

#Film #Makers #Audience

People think I'm an artist because my films lose money.
-- Woody Allen

#Thinking #Artist #People

People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.
-- Woody Allen

#Running #Morning #Writing

I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.
-- Woody Allen

#Summer #Plato #House