Woody Allen Quotes

I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.

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

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.

To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.

God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.

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

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.

I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.

Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.

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

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

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

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.

If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.

In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

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

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

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

I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic.

Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

My brain? That's my second favorite organ.

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?

I'm such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

I can levitate birds. No one cares.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

I hate reality but it's still the best place to get a good steak.

The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.

I'm not a drinker, my body won't tolerate...eh...spirits, really. I had two martinis New Years Eve and I tried to hi-jack an elevator and fly it to Cuba.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone you love.

Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.

The heart wants what it wants.

Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, 'Be fruitful, and multiply'. But not in those words.

There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage.

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows.

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

It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.

Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful, provided you can get between the right man and the right woman.

Standing in a garage no more makes you a car than standing in a church makes you a Christian.

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.

A deranged person is supposed to have the strength of ten men. I have the strength of one small boy... with polio.

How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.

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

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

Curiosity, that's what kills us. Not muggers or all that bullshit about the ozone layer. It's our own hearts and minds.

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

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

We should all be concerned about [the future] because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there!

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.

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

Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's.

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?

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

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

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.

I'm short enough and ugly enough to succeed on my own.

The last woman I was in was the Statue of Liberty.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat...college,

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

I have no idea what I am doing but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

I am at two with nature.

I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It -- with the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done, and I could also be dead.

The wicked at heart probably know something.

And my parents finally realize I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. 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

Chapter 1. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion...no, make that: he - he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yeah. 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.' Uh, no let me start this over. 'Chapter 1. He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles...'. Ah, corny, too corny for my taste. Can we ... can we try and make it more profound? 'Chapter 1. He adored New York City. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in...' No, that's going to be too preachy. I mean, you know, let's face it, I want to sell some books here. 'Chapter 1. He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage...' Too angry, I don't want to be angry. 'Chapter 1. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.' I love this. 'New York was his town, and it always would be.

All men fear death. It’s a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same. However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears. Because when you are sharing your body and heart with a great woman the world fades away. You two are the only ones in the entire universe. You conquer what most lesser men have never conquered before, you have conquered a great woman’s heart, the most vulnerable thing she can offer to another. Death no longer lingers in the mind. Fear no longer clouds your heart. Only passion for living, and for loving, become your sole reality. This is no easy task for it takes insurmountable courage. But remember this, for that moment when you are making love with a woman of true greatness you will feel immortal. I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds. Until it returns, as it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

What if the worst is true? What if there's no God, and you only go around once, and that's it? Don't you want to be a part of the experience? You know, what the hell? It's not all a drag, and I'm thinking to myself: Geez! I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after--who knows? Maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know that maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have.

Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do … I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we’re gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.

What the hell does it all mean anyhow? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing comes to anything. And yet, there's no shortage of idiots to babble. Not me. I have a vision. I'm discussing you. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your newspapers. The TV. Everybody's happy to talk. Full of misinformation. Morality, science, religion, politics, sports, love, your portfolio, your children, health. Christ, if I have to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to live, I don't wanna live. I hate goddamn fruits and vegetables. And your omega 3's, and the treadmill, and the cardiogram, and the mammogram, and the pelvic sonogram, and oh my god the-the-the colonoscopy, and with it all the day still comes where they put you in a box, and its on to the next generation of idiots, who'll also tell you all about life and define for you what's appropriate. My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him. And could you blame him? With the horror, and corruption, and ignorance, and poverty, and genocide, and AIDS, and global warming, and terrorism, and-and the family value morons, and the gun morons. "The horror," Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness, "the horror." Lucky Kurtz didn't have the Times delivered in the jungle. Ugh... then he'd see some horror. But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go "Oh my God, the horror," and then you turn the page and finish your eggs from the free range chickens. Because what can you do. It's overwhelming!