Quotes from Woody Allen

I, like a fatuous dunce who didn't realize how bad I was, jumped right in with the confidence of a true know-nothing. I practiced

As I got older, not just extinction but the meaninglessness of existence became clearer to me. I ran into the same question that bugged the former prince of Denmark: Why suffer the slings and arrows when I can just wet my nose, insert it into the light socket, and never have to deal with anxiety, heartache, or my mother's boiled chicken ever again?

There were record albums: classical, jazz, popular, the Caedmon Poets.

I love getting soaked by the rain water," she said. "It's so clean and cool. Or do I sound like one of those schmucks?

I think what it boils down to, really, is that I hate reality

Marriage is the death of hope

You can tell from my movies; while some are entertaining, no idea I ever had is going to start any new religion.

What I do have, however, is a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and I propose that it is these specs, combined with a flair for appropriating snippets from erudite sources too deep for me to grasp but which can be utilized in my work to give the deceptive impression of knowing more than I do that keeps this fairy tale afloat.

Oh, my play. It's about risk, taking chances. It's about a Jewish woman forced to make existential choices." "What's it called?" "Thus Spoke Sarah Shuster.

He is one of the few men at the club who witnessed a human sacrifice and would have found it barbaric if the victim had not been an insurance salesman.

And why did the women have to sit upstairs in the synagogue? They were prettier and smarter than the men. Those hirsute zealots who wrapped themselves in prayer shawls on the premier level, nodding up and down like bobbleheads and kissing a string up to some imaginary power who, if he did exist, despite all their begging and flattery, rewarded them with diabetes and acid reflux.

for sheer astonishment nothing beats an uncanny bit of prestidigitation perpetuated by a neurasthenic homunculus with black-framed glasses, imposing crown baldness, and a romantic presence to rival the late Arnold Stang.

I'll get back to the main theme of the book: man's search for god in a pointless, violent universe.

What if I've been wrong all these years? he thought. What if the infinite universe does not have a personal grudge against me?

Finally, we were led into the chamber of the High Priest, who bid us welcome. We bid him good tidings. He bid us sit down. We bid him speak. Soon there was a bidding war, and somehow, we outbid him and wound up with a walnut armoire, which we got at a steal.

She assured me that it wasn't so much that she didn't like me but thought I was a featherbrain, her mother's lollipop, sleepwalking through an embarrassing hustle obvious as the Turk con.

you may return here and live amongst us forever in paradise, and when you do come back, if you can remember, bring me a Junior's Cheesecake.

She bought him a leather-bound edition of Miss Julie and inscribed it "To Jerry, You only live once. If you're a schlemiel, twice won't help. Love, Lulu.

You look extra beautiful. What the character Charlie in my play calls cripplingly beautiful.

Soon-Yi was not just a diamond in the rough but round cut and flawless.

She taught me philosophy and I developed a crush on it. We read together and hired a student from Columbia to come in once a week and discuss a different great work. But the arguments we had over free will and monads, while heated, were never as combatative as the ones we had over our marriage. I knew I was in trouble when, in one philosophical discussion, Harlene proved I didn't exist. I

He couldn't bear the thought that she would want to go to an orgy, much less with or without him.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.

Not believing in a hereafter, I really can't see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or a pedophile or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy.