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As An Artist, You Are Always Striving Toward An Ultimate Achievement But Never Seem To Reach It. You Shoot A Film, And The Result Could Have Always Been Better. You Try Again, And Fail Once More. In Some Ways I Find It Enjoyable. You Never Lose Sight Of Your Goal. I Don’t Do My Job To Make Money Or To Break Box Office Records, I Simply Try Things Out. What Would Happen If I Were To Achieve Perfection At Some Point? What Would I Do Then?

-Woody Allen

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As An Artist, You

Woody Allen

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As An Artist, You Are Always Striving Toward An Ultimate Achievement But Never Seem To Reach It. You Shoot A Film, And The Result Could Have Always Been Better. You Try Again, And Fail Once More. In Some Ways I Find It Enjoyable. You Never Lose Sight Of Your Goal. I Don’t Do My Job To Make Money Or To Break Box Office Records, I Simply Try Things Out. What Would Happen If I Were To Achieve Perfection At Some Point? What Would I Do Then?

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No, No, I'm A Lowbrow. I Read [dostoevsky] More Out Of Obligation Than Enjoyment. For Enjoyment, For Me, It's A Beer And The Football Game.

I Was Nauseous And Tingly All Over. I Was Either In Love Or I Had Smallpox.

The Whole Concept Of Awards Is Silly. I Cannot Abide By The Judgment Of Other People, Because If You Accept It When They Say You Deserve An Award, Then You Have To Accept It When They Say You Don't.

In Life, One Is Entitled To A Side Dish Of Either Coleslaw Or Potato Salad, And The Choice Must Be Made In Terror, With The Knowledge That Not Only Is Our Time On Earth Limited But Most Kitchens Close At Ten.

I See No Advantages In Aging Whatsoever. You Become Shriveled. You Become Decrepit. You Lose Your Faculties. Your Peer Group Passes Away. You Sit In A Room Gumming Your Porridge. I Don't See Any Advantage In This Whatsoever.

There Is No Advantage Getting Older. You Don't Get Smarter, You Don't Get Wiser, You Don't Get More Mellow, You Don't Get More Kindly, Nothing Good Happens. Your Back Hurts More, You Get More Indigestion, Your Eyesight Isn't As Good, You Need A Hearing Aid. It's A Bad Business Getting Old And I Would Advise You Not To Do It If You Can Avoid It. It Doesn't Have A Romantic Quality.

Most Of The Time I Don't Have Much Fun. The Rest Of The Time I Don't Have Any Fun At All.

All Literature Is A Footnote To Faust. I Have No Idea What I Mean By That.

I'm Giving [my Analyst] One More Year--then I'm Going To Lourdes.

I'm Very Proud Of My Gold Pocket Watch. My Grandfather, On His Deathbed, Sold Me This Watch.

Let's Say There Was A Burning Building And You Could Rush In And You Could Save Only One Thing: Either The Last Known Copy Of Shakespeare's Plays Or Some Anonymous Human Being. What Would You Do?

I Think Bergman's Films Have Eternal Relevance, Because They Deal With The Difficulty Of Personal Relationships And Lack Of Communication Between People And Religious Aspirations And Mortality, Existential Themes That Will Be Relevant A Thousand Years From Now. When Many Of The Things That Are Successful And Trendy Today Will Have Been Long Relegated To Musty-looking Antiques, His Stuff Will Still Be Great.

Well, If I Don't Get At Least 16 Hours, I'm A Basket Case.

I Feel About New York As A Child Whose Father Is A Bank Robber. Not Perfect, But I Still Love Him.

It's Very Hard To Keep Your Spirits Up. You've Got To Keep Selling Yourself A Bill Of Goods, And Some People Are Better At Lying To Themselves Than Others. If You Face Reality Too Much, It Kills You.... You've Got To Find An Answer To The Question: Why Go On?

Then Job Fell To His Knees And Cried To The Lord, "thine Is The Kingdom And The Power And Glory. Thou Hast A Good Job. Don't Blow It."

It Seemed The World Was Divided Into Good And Bad People. The Good Ones Slept Better While The Bad Ones Seemed To Enjoy The Waking Hours Much More.

I Have No Idea What I Am Doing But Incompetence Has Never Prevented Me From Plunging In With Enthusiasm.

I Came Home One Night, Some Month Ago, And I Went To The Closet In My Bedroom...and A Moth Ate My Sports Jacket. He Was Laying On The Floor, Nauseous, Y'know.

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.

I Don't Fear Death. - I Just Don't Want To Be Around When It Happens.

With Films, I Just Scribble A Couple Of Notes For A Scene. You Don't Have To Do Any Writing At All, You Just Have Your Notes For The Scene, Which Are Written With The Actors And The Camera In Mind. The Actual Script Is A Necessity For Casting And Budgeting, But The End Product Often Doesn't Bear Much Resemblance To The Script--at Least In My Case.

I've Been Escaping My Whole Life. Since I Was A Little Child, I Escaped Into The Movies On The Other Side As An Audience Member. I Escaped By Going Into The Movies And Sitting In The Movies All Day Long.

You Make A Film And Always Hope You're Going Make "citizen Kane" Or "the Bicycle Thief." You Make The Film, And For One Reason Or Another, One Clicks And One Doesn't, But It's Out Of Your Control Completely.

If You're Born With A Gift, To Behave Like It's An Achievement Is Not Right.

I Got A Divorce Because My Ex-wife Left Me For Another Woman.

He Was So Depressed, He Tried To Commit Suicide By Inhaling Next To An Armenian.

The Great Question Of Philosophy Remains: If Life Is Meaningless, What Can Be Done About Alphabet Soup?

I Work All The Time Because It's A Great Distraction And It Keeps Me From Sitting Home And Obsessing Morbidly.

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.

One Of The Wonderful Things About Making A Film Of Any Genre Is That You Have Dialogue. You Can Take Up A Position. If You Want To Say Something About Your Position, You Can Just Say It. You Don't Have To Spend Massive Amounts Of Screen Time.

What If Nothing Exists And We're All In Somebody's Dream? Or What's Worse, What If Only That Fat Guy In The Third Row Exists?

Does Art Imitate Life, Or Does Life Imitate Tv?

A General Philosophy Of The Female Characters In My Films Is They All Want Something To Believe In, And Not Having Anything.

I Just Can't Listen To Any More Wagner, You Know...i'm Starting To Get The Urge To Conquer Poland.

If You Aren't Failing, You Aren't Trying.

If My Films Don't Show A Profit, I Know I'm Doing Something Right.

I Have No Regard For That Kind Of Ceremony. I Just Don't Think They Know What They're Doing. When You See Who Wins Those Things-or Who Doesn't Win Them-you Can See How Meaningless This Oscar Thing Is.

I'm Going To My Psychoanalyst One More Year, Then I'm Going To Lourdes.

You Can Be With Your Wife, Very Happily Married, And Then You Meet Some Woman And You Love Her. But You Love Your Wife, Too. And You Also Love That One. Or If She's Met Some Man And She Loves The Man And She Loves You. And Then You Meet Somebody Else And Now There Are Three Of You. Why Only One Person?

But It Was I - Yes I - Who Discovered The Link Between Excessive Masturbation And Entry Into Politics!

I've Had Bad Luck In My Two Previous Marriages. The First Wife Left Me, And The Second Did Not.

Paris Is Particularly Beautiful In The Rain. It Was Just A Nice Experience For Me, A Pleasant Experience, And I Was Able To Present It To The World Through My Eyes, Very Subjectively - Not Realistically, But Subjectively.

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.

My Parents Stayed Together For Forty Years. But That Was Out Of Spite.

I'm Not Anti-social. I'm Just Not Social.

The Chief Problem About Death ... Is The Fear That There May Be No Afterlife - A Depressing Thought.

My Mind Can Never Know My Body, Although It Has Become Quite Friendly With My Legs.

You'll Find As You Go Through Life That Great Depth And Smoldering Sensuality Don't Always Win.

Science Is An Intellectual Dead End, You Know? It's A Lot Of Little Guys In Tweed Suits Cutting Up Frogs On Foundation Grants.

The Great Roe Is A Mythological Beast With The Head Of A Lion And The Body Of A Lion, Though Not The Same Lion.

I Had A Mad Impulse To Throw You Down On The Lunar Surface And Commit Interstellar Perversion With You.

Take The Money And Run.

I Like Writing. It Keeps My Mind Off Grim Subjects. It's Therapeutic In The Same Way A Patient In An Institution Is Given Fingerpaints.

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.

I Have An Intense Desire To Return To The Womb. Anybody's.

What' S The Matter With Me? Why Can't I Be Cool?

We Stand At A Crossroads. One Path Leads To Despair, The Other To Destruction. Let's Hope We Make The Right Choice.

All The Crap They Tell You About... Getting Joy And Having A Kind Of Wisdom In Your Golden Years - It's All Tripe.

My Experience Creatively Is Different Than My Experience In Life, For, As My Father Would Say, The Simple Reason That You Can't Get Hurt When Everything Goes Wrong Creatively.

Those Who Can't Do, Teach!

I've Always Believed That Thoughtful People Don't Really Take The Tabloids Seriously. They're Basically A Form Of Entertainment. I Enjoy Them As Much As The Next New Yorker.

Is Sex Dirty? Only If It's Done Right.

I've Always Been Interested In Being In Other People's Movies. I Never Get Any Offers.

To Me, Movies Are Valuable As An Art Form And As A Wonderful Means Of Popular Entertainment. But I Think Movies Have Gone Terribly Wrong.

I Believe People Ought To Mate For Life...like Pigeons Or Catholics.

Humorists Always Sit At The Children's Table.

And My Parents Finally Realize I'm Kidnapped And They Snap Into Action Immediately: They Rent Out My Room.

The Good Sleep Better, But The Bad Seem To Enjoy The Waking Hours Much More.

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.

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.

Should I Marry W.? Not If She Won't Tell Me The Other Letters In Her Name.

Your Self-esteem Is A Notch Below Kafka.

Anything Worth Knowing Cannot Be Understood By The Human Mind.

You Can't Work At A Relationship; You Can't Control It. You Have To Be Lucky And Go Through Your Life. If You Are Not Lucky You Have To Be Prepared For Some Degree Of Suffering. That's Why Most Relationships Are Very Difficult And Have Some Degree Of Pain. People Stay Together Because Of Inertia, They Don't Have The Energy. Because They Are Frightened Of Being Lonely, Or They Have Children.

Those Who Can't Do, Teach. And Those Who Can't Teach, Teach Gym.

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.

When The Academy Called, I Panicked. I Thought They Might Want Their Oscars Back And The Pawn Shop Has Been Out Of Business For A While.

You Can Learn Technological Things, You Can Learn About Specific Things, But The Real Problems That People Deal With In Any Subject, Existential Subjects Or Romantic Subjects, You Never Learn Anything. So You Make A Fool Of Yourself When You're 20, You Make A Fool Of Yourself At 40, At 60 At 80. The Ancient Greeks Were Dealing With These Problems. They Screwed Up All The Time. People Do Now.

Show Business Is Dog Eat Dog. It's Worse Than Dog Eat Dog. It's Dog Doesn't Return Dog's Phone Calls.

I Don't Like To Meet The Actor And Have A Lot Of Conferences And Talk About Their Sub-life And Their Off-screen Life And Their Back Stories And All That Nonsense, Because It Never Means Anything.

His Lack Of Education Is More Than Compensated For By His Keenly Developed Moral Bankruptcy.

I Should Have Known Something Was Wrong With My First Wife. When I Brought Her Home To Meet My Parents, They Approved Of Her.

I Think Universal Harmony Is A Pipedream And It May Be More Productive To Focus On More Modest Goals, Like A Ban On Yodeling.

Usually, You Hire People That You Think Are Wonderful.

Sylvia Plath. Interesting Poetess Whose Tragic Suicide Was Misinterpreted As Romantic By The College-girl Mentality.

I'm Awash In Self-contempt!

I Have Great Faith In The Actors. When They Improvise, It Always Sounds Better Than The Stuff I Write In My Bedroom. When They Improvise, They Make It Sound Alive.

My One Regret In Life Is That I Am Not Someone Else.

People Think I'm An Artist Because My Films Lose Money.

I've Always Been Lucky In Casting. The Trick In Casting Is To Hire Great People, And Let Them Do What They Do, Don't Interfere With Them Too Much. And Then When They're Great, Take Credit For It In The End.

I Enjoy The Making Of The Film And It's Something For Me To Do. If Nobody Ever Comes To My Films, If People Don't Want To Give Me Money To Make Films, That Will Stop Me. But As Long As People Come All Over The World And I Have An Audience And I Have Ideas For Films, I Will Do Them For As Long As I Enjoy The Process. And I Like The Whole Process Of Making A Film.

As I've Gotten Older, The Parts Have Diminished. I Liked It When I Was Younger, I Could Always Play The Lead In The Movie And I Could Do All The Romantic Scenes With The Women, And It Was Fun And I Liked To Play That. Now, I'm Older And I'm Reduced To Playing The Backstage Doorman Or The Uncle Or Something. I Don't Really Love That So Occasionally, When A Part Comes Up, I'll Play It.

If I Could Only See One Miracle, Just One Miracle. Like A Burning Bush, Or The Seas Part, Or My Uncle Sasha Pick Up A Check.

Spencer Was Searching For A Woman Interested In Gold, Inorganic Chemistry, Outdoor Sex And The Music Of Bach. In Short, He Was Looking For Himself, Only Female.

When A Man Is Driving In A Car And Looks Out The Window And Notices A Woman With A Great Body, As He Strains To Check Her Face Out, How Does She Know To Keep Turning So The Back Of Her Head Is Always Toward Him?

Life Is A Tragedy Filled With Suffering And Despair And Yet Some People Do Manage To Avoid Jury Duty.

Time Is Nature's Way Of Keeping Everything From Happening At Once.

The Lion And The Calf Shall Lie Down Together But The Calf Won't Get Much Sleep.

Pale, Nervous Girls With Black-rimmed Glasses And Blunt-cut Hair Lolled Around On Sofas, Riffling Penguin Classics Provocatively. [...] But It Wasn’t Just Intellectual Experiences—they Were Peddling Emotional Ones, Too. For Fifty Bucks, I Learned, You Could “relate Without Getting Close.” For A Hundred, A Girl Would Lend You Her Bartok Records, Have Dinner, And Then Let You Watch While She Had An Anxiety Attack.

To Be A Film Director Is Not A Democracy, It's Really A Tyranny. You're The Head Of The Project, For Better Rather Than Worse. I Write The Film And I Direct The Film, I Decide Who's Going To Be In It, I Decide On The Editing, I Put In The Music From My Own Record Collection.

In Formulating Any Philosophy The First Consideration Must Always Be: What Can We Know? That Is, What Can We Be Sure We Know, Or Sure That We Know We Knew It, If Indeed It Is At All Knowable. Or Have We Simply Forgotten It And Are Too Embarrassed To Say Anything? Descartes Hinted At The Problem When He Wrote, 'my Mind Can Never Know My Body, Although It Has Become Quite Friendly With My Legs.

I Would Never Wanna Belong To Any Club That Would Have Someone Like Me For A Member.

Cynicism Is Reality With An Alternate Spelling.

Psychoanalyses Is Like Music Lessons, For 5 Years You Do Not Notice Any Progress And Suddenly You Can Play The Piano.

There's No Correlation Between What The Public Likes And What I'm After. I'm In A Different World.

You Look Up After Many Years And You Find That A Film Has Become A Classic Because It's Meaningful To People And Alive, Decade After Decade.

If You Are Not Failing Now And Again, Its A Sign You Are Not Doing Anything Very Innovative

When I Am In New York, I Want To Be In Europe, And When I Am In Europe, I Want To Be In New York.

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 Thing You Could Say About Him Is That Basically He's An Underachiever. After All, You Know, There Are Worse Things In Life Than Death.

Eighty Percent Of Success Is Showing Up.

Bisexuality Doubles Your Chances Of A Date On A Saturday Night. I Believe That Sex Is A Beautiful Thing Between Two People. Between Five, It's Fantastic. If There Is Reincarnation, I'd Like To Come Back As Warren Beatty's Fingertips. I'm Such A Good Lover Because I Practice A Lot On My Own. My Love Life Is Terrible. The Last Time I Was Inside A Woman Was When I Visited The Statue Of Liberty. Sex Without Love Is An Empty Experience, But As Empty Experiences Go It's A Pretty Good One.

It Is Impossible To Travel Faster Than Light, And Certainly Not Desirable, As One’s Hat Keeps Blowing Off.

Is World Peace Possible Or Is The Human Race Too Innately Aggressive? For Instance: Have You Ever Seen Women At A Sample Sale?

There Are Worse Things In Life Than Death. Have You Ever Spent An Evening With An Insurance Salesman?

I Could Turn On My Radio In The Morning When I Was Getting Dressed For School And Hear Frank Sinatra And Duke Ellington And Benny Goodman And Think This Is The Music. Now That Music Is Art. Ellington Is Art. At That Time It Was Just What You Heard On The Radio. Cole Porter Was Just A Guy Who Wrote Pretty Songs And Billie Holliday Would Sing Them.

When We Played Softball, I'd Steal Second Base, Feel Guilty And Go Back.

I Hate Reality But It's Still The Best Place To Get A Good Steak.

I Wouldn't Mind Dying So Much If It Wasn't That I Would Be Dead At The End Of It.

My Analyst Warned Me, But You Were So Beautiful I Got Another Analyst.

I Failed To Make The Chess Team Because Of My Height.

The True Test Of Maturity Is Not How Old A Person Is But How He Reacts To Awakening In The Mid-town Area In His Shorts.

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.

Money Is Better Than Poverty, If Only For Financial Reasons.

If I Just Got Up In The Morning And Had No Place To Go And Was Retired Or Something, I Would Be Sitting There And Be Thinking, "gee, What Is The Purpose Of Life? Why Are We All Finite? Why Do We Get Old And Die? Is There Nothing Out There? Why Is It So Tragic? Why Do Our Loved Ones Perish? Why Do We Generate?" Who Wants To Think About That Stuff?

Harvard Makes Mistakes Too, You Know. Kissinger Taught There.

The Audience Goes To Sleep Really Quickly! If You Have A Slight Pause At The Wrong Time, That's It!

Students Achieving Oneness Will Move On To Twoness.

I Am Told The Settlement Of $5 Million I Am Being Paid Is The Largest Amount Ever Paid Under The New York Right To Privacy Law

For The First Year Of Marriage I Had Basically A Bad Attitude. I Tended To Place My Wife Underneath A Pedestal.

Figures Tell Us There Are Already More People On Earth Than We Need To Move Even The Heaviest Piano.

In Perpetrating A Revolution, There Are Two Requirements: Someone Or Something To Revolt Against And Someone To Actually Show Up And Do The Revolting. Dress Is Usually Casual And Both Parties May Be Flexible About Time And Place, But If Either Faction Fails To Attend, The Whole Enterprise Is Likely To Come Off Badly.

Existence For Eternity Could Get A Little Boring... Especially Towards The End.

I Always Feel, I Guess Being A Product Of The Movies Of The 40s Where Movies Were The Greatest Things And Screens Were Big And Palaces Were Palaces And Stars Were Larger Than Life That Reality Was So Much Inferior To What We Felt Was Conceivably Possible From What We Had Seen In The Movies.

Larger Than Life

Life Is Short. Short, And Not About Anything Except What You Can Touch And What Touches You.

Subjectivity Is Objective.

That (sex) Was The Most Fun I Ever Had Without Laughing.

I Have A Number Of Symptoms That Are Neurotic And Are Constricting In The Sense That If I Had A Brilliant Idea For A Film That Had To Be Shot In Tulsa, Ok I Would Tear It Up And Throw It Away. Anything Outside Of New York, 'cause I Can't Exist In A Hotel Outside Of My Own Home, I Have To Be In My Own Home And My Own Environment. This Is A Neurotic Symptom That Is Constricting To My Work Even.

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.

I'm Very Old-fashioned. I Believe That People Should Stay Married For Life, Like Pigeons And Catholics.

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.

I Cannot Say For Certain That God Does Not Exist; I Think The Worst Thing That Can Be Said About Him Is That He's A Bit Of An Underachiever.

I Don't Know Enough To Be Incompetent.

I Know What I Think But I Don't Know How To Put It Into Words. Maybe I Could Get A Little Bit Drunk And Dance It For You.

Regarding Love What Can You Say? It's Not The Quantity Of Your Sexual Relations That Counts. It's The Quality. On The Other Hand If The Quantity Drops Below Once Every Eight Months, I Would Definitely Look Into It.

The Jewish Culture - People That Are Jewish Have A Certain Cultural Habit That They've Formed And One Of Those Habits Is An Appreciation Of Theater And Music - These Are Cultural Things One Does Associate With Values That Are Promulgated By Jewish Families. I Think That's A Good Thing.

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.

I Know Of Only Six Genuine Comic Geniuses In Movie History; Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx & Harpo Marx, Peter Sellers, And W.c. Fields.

I Hate The Beach. I Hate The Sun. I'm Pale And I'm Redheaded. I Don't Tan - I Stroke!

All Over The World, Relationships Between Men And Women Are Very, Very Tricky And Very Difficult And You Don't Learn Anything. It's Not An Exact Science, So You Can't Learn Anything. You're Always Going By Instinct And Your Instinct Betrays You Because You Want What You Want When You Want It.

Music Has Always Helped My Films. In 'the Curse Of The Jade Scorpion,' You Can Hear 'sunrise' By Glenn Miller, An Idol Of My Childhood, In The Surprise Ending. I Like Mixing Comedy With Suspense And Action.

There Are Three Things Jewish People Worship-god, Chinese Food And Wall-to-wall Carpeting.

My Mother Never Had Time For Me. When You're The Middle Child In A Family Of Five Million, You Don't Get Any Attention.

Is There A Separation Between Body And Mind, And If So Which Is It Better To Have?

I Had A Terrible Education. I Attended A School For Emotionally Disturbed Teachers.

Culturally Speaking, I Was Raised In A Jewish Household. In Addition To The Religious Side Of It, I Was Taught Respect For Books And Learning And The Higher Professions Like Medicine And Law And Teaching.

In Order To Be Successful, All You've Got To Do Is Show Up 80 Percent Of The Time.

I Should Go To Paris And Jump Off Of The Eiffel Tower. If I Took The Concorde, I Could Be Dead Three Hours Earlier.

Isn't All Mankind Ultimately Executed For A Crime It Never Committed?

Capital Punishment

I'm Trying To Arrange My Life So I Don't Have To Be Present.

I Don't Think My Film Style Has Changed. I'm Doing The Same Kind Of Jokes I Did When I Was Younger.

Nietzsche Says That We Will Live The Same Life, Over And Over Again. God - I'll Have To Sit Through The Ice Capades Again.

The Only Thing That Does Change, To Some Degree, Is [that] You Have Some Life Experiences, You Suffer A Certain Amount And You Incorporate That Into Your Work. Not In The Content Of Your Work, But In The Sensibility Of Your Work. It's Nothing That You Try And Do; It Just Happens. And If You're Lucky, People Buy Tickets To See It, And If You're Not Lucky, [then] They Don't Like It. But That's All.

I Was The Captain Of The Latent Paranoid Softball Team. We Used To Play All The Neurotics On Sunday Morning. Nailbiters Against The Bedwetters, And If You've Never Seen Neurotics Play Softball, It's Really Funny. I Used To Steal Second Base, And Feel Guilty And Go Back.

Who's The Bigger Idiot, The Idiot Or The Idiot Who Gets Fooled By The Idiot?

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.

My Parents Were Very Old World. They Come From Brooklyn, Which Is The Heart Of The Old World. Their Values In Life Are God And Carpeting.

Rather Than Live On In The Hearts And Minds Of My Fellow Man, I Would Rather Live On In My Apartment.

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.

The Artist Can't Give You An Answer That's Satisfying To The Dreadful Reality Of Your Existence. So The Best You Can Do Is Maybe Entertain People And Refresh Them For An Hour-and-a-half.

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.

After 60, All Of Us Belong To The Weaker Sex.

You Make Films Whether They're Dramas Or Comedies About Neurotic People. Flawed People. Interesting Personality Traits. To Make Them About Calm, Stable Untroubled People Isn't Interesting.

At The Trial Stubbs Chose To Act As His Own Lawyer, But A Conflict Over His Fee Led To Ill Feelings.

Life Is Full Of Moments That Are Good - Winning A Lottery, Seeing A Beautiful Woman, A Great Dinner - But The Whole Thing Is Tragic. It's An Oasis That Is Very Pleasant.

New York Is My Home And I Have A Particular Fondness For It. I Think It's A Place Where You Can Generate Any Kind Of Story Wonderfully. But I Also Would Be Very Happy To Make A Film In Paris Or Rome.

When I'm Not Working, I Think And I Think When I Get Depressed.

I Want To Return To The Womb, Anyone's.

If 90% Of Success In Life Is Showing Up, The Other 10% Depends On What You're Showing Up For.

People Always Ask Me, Do You Ever Think You'll Wake Up One Morning And Not Be Funny? That Thought Would Never Occur To Me--it's An Odd Thought And Not Realistic. Because Funny And Me Are Not Separate. We're One.

I Can't Do Anything To Death, Doctor's Orders.

I'm Short Enough And Ugly Enough To Succeed On My Own.

Life Is For The Living.

We Are All Interested In The Future, For That Is Where You And I Are Going To Spend The Rest Of Our Lives.

Books And Movies

I've Never Had A Block. I'm Talking Within The Limits Of My Abilities. But In My Own Small Way, I've Had An Embarrassment Of Riches. I'll Have Five Ideas And I'm Dying To Do Them All. It Takes Weeks Or Months Where I Agonize And Obsess Over Which To Do Next. I Wish Sometimes Someone Would Choose For Me. If Someone Said, Do Idea Number Three Next, That Would Be Fine. But I Have Never Had Any Sense Of Running Dry.

I Don't Own A Computer. I've Never Seen Anything Online At All - Nothing. I Don't Own A Word Processor. I Have None Of That Stuff. It's Not An Act Of Rebellion. I'm Just Not A Gadget Person.

I'm Generally Not A Social Dramatist Or Comedy Writer. My Interests Have Always Been More In Psychological Stories Or Personal Relations And Comic Ideas.

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.

I Do The Movies Just For Myself Like An Institutionalized Person Who Basket-weaves. Busy Fingers Are Happy Fingers. I Don't Care About The Films. I Don't Care If They're Flushed Down The Toilet After I Die.

All My Life Is Passing In Front Of My Eyes. The Worst Part Of It Is I'm Driving A Used Car.

The Only Thing Standing Between Me And Greatness Is Me.

Side Effects Not Only Is There No God, But Try Getting A Plumber On The Weekend. Woody Allen Sex Alleviates Tension. Love Causes It.

I Always Thought That As Long As Man Is Mortal, He Will Never Be Relaxed.

There's No Point In Looking Back, Because There's Nothing You Can Really Do To Improve The Film. You Can Only Aggravate And Wish You Had Done Stuff Better.

I Didn't Believe In Reincarnation In My Past Life, And I Still Don't.

My Grammy Never Gave Gifts, You Know. She Was Too Busy Getting Raped By Cossacks.

Everything In Life Turns Out To Be A Distraction From The Real Thing You Want To Do. There Are A Million Distractions And When I Was A Kid I Was Very Disciplined. I Knew That The Other Kids Weren't. I Was The One Able To Do The Thing, Not Because I Had More Talent, Maybe Less, But Because They Simply Weren't Applying Themselves.

The Most Important Words In The English Language Are Not 'i Love You' But 'it's Benign.'

If You Take A Frown And Turn It Upside Down, The Person You Are Holding By The Ankles Will Soon Pass Out.

There Is Always The Possibility That People Will Change. Real Change Is More Rare. You Are Who You Are At A Certain Age In Life You Are Pretty Much A Variation Of That Your Whole Life. It's Conceivable That You Will Change But It's Not Likely.

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Elizabeth George

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