Woody Allen Quotes

“If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.”
― Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters

“I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”
― Woody Allen

“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.”
― Woody Allen, Manhattan

“When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Anything worth knowing cannot be understood by the human mind.”
― Woody Allen

“You can't ride two horses with one behind.”
― Woody Allen

“No, no, because she's a mental adolescent, and being romantic,
she has a death wish.

So, for a brief moment of passion,she completely abandons all responsibilities.”
― Woody Allen

“It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.”
― Woody Allen

“...I might mention my belief that girls who like Woody Allen movies are nicer girls than girls who don't...”
― Adam Levin, The Instructions

“The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.”
― Woody Allen

“Beautiful, funny, smart, sexual, and also neurotic? It's like filling an inside straight.”
― Woody Allen

“There's a snake in my butt!”
― Woody Allen

“I’d like to think that the day I realize we will always be miserable will differ from every other. I hope it will so obnoxiously stand out from the monotonous cycle of my days, that I wouldn’t forget that sorrowful moment of comprehension. But, when that breeze of reality comes by, it wont be a memorable hurricane, nor a momentous tornado. It will be the same, sad, soft wind that I felt the day before, and the day before that. Because the moment you understand your inevitable misery in life, may also be the day you see you are to always be dejected.”
― Temperance

“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.”
― Woody Allen

“Go ahead — walk into the propeller.”
― Woody Allen

“If my penis were a writer/director, it would be Woody Allen - small, neurotic, and, frankly, hit or miss.”
― Matthew Norman, Domestic Violets

“Have the WNBA lower the hoops. Because even though layups get the job done, they're lame. Seriously, layups look the way Woody Allen talks. Wimpy as fuck.”
― Phoebe Robinson, You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

“Comedy is a lie, too, of course. It’s a defense, an aggression. It is a thing created to separate, to say, “I am not like this.” It is Godlike in its judgment and, by definition, the antithesis of empathy. Comedy sits on its throne and states: You are ridiculous. You are pathetic. You are stupid. Your pain amuses me. Most important, I am not you. Even comedy directed at the self, the stand-ups, the Woody Allens of the world, is performed as an act of defense: I am in on the joke that is me, therefore the joke is not me.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character responds by saying, “Did you have the wrong kind? Really? I've never had the wrong kind. Never, ever. My worst one was right on the money.”

Grace works the same way. It is what it is and it's always right on the money. You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited.”
― Cathleen Falsani, Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace

“... I somehow got the idea that oak floors were located exclusively in New York City. This came chiefly from watching Woody Allen movies. I wanted to live someplace that looked like Mia Farrow's apartment in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (little did I know that it was Mia Farrow's apartment). To me, this kind of space did not connote wealth. These were places where paint was peeling and the rugs were frayed, places where smart people sat around drinking gin and tonics, having interesting conversations, and living, according to my logic, in an authentic way.”
― Meghan Daum

“Once or twice, at night, he planted himself in front of the type-writer, trying to get back to the book he'd come to New York to write. It was supposed to be about America, and freedom, and the kinship of time to pain, but in order to write about these things, he'd needed experience. Well, be careful what you wish for. For now all he seemed capable of producing was a string of sentences starting, Here was William. Here was William's courage, for example. And here was William's sadness, smallness of stature, size of hands. Here was his laugh in a dark movie theater, his unpunk love of the films of Woody Allen, not for any of the obvious ways they flattered his sensibility, but for something he called their tragic sense, which he compared to Chekhov's (whom Mercer knew he had not read). Here was the way he never asked Mercer about his work; the way he never talked about his own and yet seemed to carry it with him just beneath the skin; the way his skin looked in the sodium light from outside with the light off, with clothes off, in silver rain; the way he embodied qualities Mercer wanted to have, but without ruining them by wanting to have them; the way his genius overflowed its vessel, running off into the drain; the unfinished self-portrait; the hint of some trauma in his past, like the war a shell-shocked town never talks about; his terrible taste in friends; his complete lack of discipline; the inborn incapacity for certain basic things that made you want to mother him, fuck him, give your right and left arms for him, this man-child, this skinny American; and finally his wildness, his refusal to be imaginable by anyone.”
― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire

“I’ve never been more bummed walking out of a movie and back into present time than after seeing ‘Midnight in Paris.”
― Gregor Collins, The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann

“I can't believe that 24 hours ago I was in an Egyptian tomb and now here I am, on the verge of a madcap, Manhattan weekend.”
― Tam Francis

“His face was knotted with rage. He felt like fainting but couldn't remember the proper way to fall.”
― Woody Allen, Without Feathers

“Are you alone?

- Of course.

- I thought I heard voices.

- I was praying.

- I heard two voices.

- Oh, well, I do both parts.

--Love and Death screenplay”
― Woody Allen Allen

“Ve evvel zaman içinde bir gömlek tüccarı zor dönemlerden geçiyordu.Ne mal satabiliyor, ne de biraz olsun gelir elde edebiliyordu. Dua etti ve dedi ki : "Tanrım neden beni böyle acılar içine düşürdün? Hasımlarım mallarını satıyor, bir ben satamıyorum. Hem de sezonun en canlı zamanı.Gömleklerim güzel gömlekler. Şu viskozlara bir bak.Düğmeli yakalar var,geniş yakalar var ama hiçbir şey satmıyor.Yine de emirlerinize sadık kaldım.Küçük kardeşim çocuk hazır giyiminde yok satarken, ben neden ekmek paramı kazanamıyorum?"

Ve Tanrı adamı duydu ve dedi ki:"Gömlek meselesi..."

"Evet, Tanrım" dedi adam, dizlerinin üzerine çökerek.

"Ceplerinin üstlerine bir timsah yerleştir."

"Pardon, Tanrım?"

"Sen dediğimi yap. Pişman olmazsın."

Ve adam bütün gömleklerinin üzerine ufak bir timsah simgesi dikti.Bir de ne görsün! Adamın malları peynir ekmek gibi sattı ve dünyalar onun oldu.Rakiplerini feryat figan ve diş gıcırtıları sardı!”
― Woody Allen, Without Feathers

“A world I will never feel comfortable in, never understand, and never approve of or forgive.”
― Woody Allen, Apropos of Nothing