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Woody Allen
130 quotes
“Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What's New, Pussycat? (1965).
“I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It's about Russia.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Allen by Herb Caen in Reader's Digest, October 1967. For additional citations see this entry from Quote Investigator.
“I think crime pays. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Take the Money and Run (1969).
“Allen: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it? Woman: Yes, it is. Allen: What does it say to you? Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos. Allen: What are you doing Saturday night? Woman: Committing suicide. Allen: What about Friday night?”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Play It Again, Sam (1972).
“On bisexuality: It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The earliest source located is here, in the sidebar "Quotations According to Woody Allen" which appeared alongside the New York Times article "Everything You Wanted to Know About Woody Allen at 40" by Mel Gussow, 1 Dece…
“Love is the answer. But while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Also found in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" from The New York Times (1 December 1975).
“There have been times when I've thought of suicide but with my luck it'd probably be a temporary solution.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Also found in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" from The New York Times (1 December 1975).
“The difference between sex and death is, with death you can do it alone and nobody's going to make fun of you.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Also found in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" from The New York Times (1 December 1975).
“To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stardust Memories (1980).
“Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982).
“It figures you've got to hate yourself if you've got any integrity at all.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Douglas Brode in Woody Allen – His Films and Career (1985).
“Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).
“I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).
“What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn't for certain people.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Radio Days (1987).
“[The universe is] haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: September (1987).
“Change is death.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some guy hit my car fender the other day, and I said unto him, "Be fruitful and multiply." But not in those words.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Woody Allen Companion (1993) edited by Stephen J. Spignesi, Ch. 7.
“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.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader (1993)
“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50.
“We're worth a lot of dough. Whatever you see is antiques. This thing here. This is from — I don't remember exactly. I think it's the Renaissance or the Magna Carta or something. But that's where it's from.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Small Time Crooks (2001).
“I'm not saying I didn't enjoy myself, but I didn't.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001).
“As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 [...] it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Der Spiegel (June 20, 2005, as quoted by the New York Post)
“To me there's no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They're all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New York Times interview (2010).
“This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life: I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have, since I was a little boy. It hasn't gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that it's a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience, and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Press conference for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger at the Cannes Film Festival (2011).
“My relationship with death remains the same - I'm strongly against it, All I can do is wait for it,”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The film studios learned to our dismay but to their pleasure that if they spent $200 million making a film they could make half a billion on it. So they were not interested anymore in quality films... They can't afford to be that risky at those prices. Consequently you're getting a lot of remakes, sequels, dopey comedies full of toilet jokes...”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BBC radio interview (2011).
“Death is like a colonoscopy, the problem is that life is like the prep day.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“V. attacked his first woman at eighteen, and thereafter raped half a dozen per week for years. The best I was able to do with him in therapy was to substitute a more socially acceptable habit to replace his aggressive tendencies; and thereafter when he chanced upon an unsuspecting female, instead of assaulting her, he would produce a large halibut from his jacket and show it to her. While the sight of it caused consternation in some, the women were spared any violence and some even confessed their lives were immeasurably enriched by the experience.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Last year, organized crime was directly responsible for more than one hundred murders, and mafiosi participated indirectly in several hundred more, either by lending the killers carfare or by holding their coats. Other illicit activities engaged in by Cosa Nostra members included gambling, narcotics, prostitution, hijacking, loansharking, and the transportation of a large whitefish across the state line for immoral purposes.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rabbi Zwi Chaim Yisroel, an Orthodox scholar of the Torah and a man who developed whining to an art unheard of in the West, was unanimously hailed as the wisest man of the Renaissance by his fellow-Hebrews, who totalled a sixteenth of one per cent of the population. Once, while he was on his way to synagogue to celebrate the sacred Jewish holiday commemorating God's reneging on every promise, a woman stopped him and asking the following question: "Rabbi, why are we not allowed to eat pork?" "We're not?" the Rev said incredulously. "Uh-oh.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rabbi Raditz of Poland was a very short rabbi with a long beard, who was said to have inspired many pogroms with his sense of humor. One of his disciples asked, "Who did God like better, Moses or Abraham?" "Abraham," the Zaddik said. "But Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land," said the disciple. "All right, so Moses," the Zaddik answered.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not believe in God," I told him. "For if there is a God, then tell me, Uncle, why is there poverty and baldness? Why do some men go through life immune to a thousand mortal enemies of the race, while others get a migraine that lasts for weeks? Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to experience one's own death objectively and still carry a tune.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you're dressed for it.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They called me mad... But it was I - yes I - who discovered the link between excessive masturbation and entry into politics!”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When it comes to sex there are certain things that should always be left unknown, and with my luck, they probably will be.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My brain: it's my second favorite organ.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, he was probably a member of the National Rifle Association. It was a group that helped criminals get guns so they could shoot citizens. It was a public service.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not really the heroic type. I was beat up by Quakers.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex and death. Two things that come but once in my lifetime, but at least after death you're not nauseous.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex without love is an empty experience. But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If He was a carpenter, I wondered what He charged for bookshelves.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source