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He Adored New York City. He Idolized It All Out Of Proportion... No, Make That: He - He Romanticized It All Out Of Proportion. Yes. 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.

-Woody Allen

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He Adored New York

Woody Allen

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He Adored New York City. He Idolized It All Out Of Proportion... No, Make That: He - He Romanticized It All Out Of Proportion. Yes. 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.

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Black And White

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I Don't Mind Dying... As Long As I Don't Have To Be There When It Happens.

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Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going? Is There Possibility Of A Group Discount?

Right Now It's Only A Notion, But I Think I Can Get The Money To Make It Into A Concept, And Later Turn It Into An Idea.

I Loathed Every Day And Regret Every Day I Spent In School. I Like To Be Taught To Read And Write And Add And Then Be Left Alone.

Life Is Like A Concentration Camp... You Can't Leave Without Dying.

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

I Recently Turned 60. Practically A Third Of My Life Is Over.

The Last Woman I Was In Was The Statue Of Liberty.

The Whole Country Was Tied Together By Radio. We All Experienced The Same Heroes And Comedians And Singers. They Were Giants.

The Whole Thrust Of Science And The Medical Profession Is To Try And Prevent It From Happening, To Try To Prolong Life, To Keep You From Dying, To Keep You From Getting Older, To Rejuvenate You. I Mean, That's Everybody's Wish. The Fountain Of Youth Is Everybody's Sought-after Thing.

Those Modern Analysts, They Charge So Much! In My Day, For Five Marks Freud Himself Would Treat You. For Ten Marks He Would Treat You And Press Your Pants. For Fifteen Marks Freud Would Let You Treat Him - That Included A Choice Of Any Two Vegetables.

[stanley] Kubrick Was A Great Artist And A Perfectionist. He Always Wanted The Exact Right Thing. He Did A Million Takes. Everything Had To Be Perfect. I'm An Imperfectionist. I Don't Really Care That Much About The Work. I Write Quickly. I'm Careless. I Shoot Carelessly.

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

Reality May Not Be The Best Of All Possible Worlds, But It's Still The Only Place Where You Can Get A Decent Steak.

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

All I Have In My Life Is My Imagination

I'm Such A Good Lover Because I Practice A Lot On My Own.

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

How Wrong Emily Dickinson Was! Hope Is Not "the Thing With Feathers." The Thing With Feathers Has Turned Out To Be My Nephew. I Must Take Him To A Specialist In Zurich.

In Short, The Best Thing To Do Is Behave In A Manner Befitting One's Age. If You Are Sixteen Or Under, Try Not To Go Bald.

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.

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

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

I'd Like To Make A Great Movie. I've Made Many Movies. I Think I've Made Some Good Movies, But I Never Felt I've Made A Great Movie.

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

I'm Afraid Of The Dark,and Suspicious Of The Light.

One Of The Interesting Things Is, The Most Gifted People, The Biggest People, Have No Problem Taking Small Roles.

Standing In A Garage No More Makes You A Car Than Standing In A Church Makes You A Christian.

I Was Walking Through The Woods, Thinking About Christ. If He Was A Carpenter, I Wondered What He Charged For Bookshelves.

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.

It's A Match Made In Heaven...by A Retarded Angel.

I've Never Dated A Fictional Character Before. The Closest I Ever Came Was An Italian.

Fictional Character

I Would Not Like To Live In The Past Because You Don't Get Anesthetic When You Go To The Dentist. You Don't Get Antibiotics. You Don't Get The Things That You Are Used To Now, Cell Phones And Televisions And Things That Are Very Convenient. You Don't Want That. But, It Would Be Fun If You Could, Every Now And Then, Just Meet A Friend For Lunch At Maxim's In Paris In 1900, Or Go Back To 1870 Just For A Couple Of Hours, Take A Walk In The Park, And Then Come Right Back To Broadway.

It's Hard For Me To Know. I'll Think, 'i Really Brought Off My Ideas, It's Great,' And No One Sparks To It

Over The Years I've Never Written Or Made Movies About Political Themes 'cause While They Do Have Current Critical Importance, In The Large, Large Scheme Of Things, Only The Big Questions Matter And The Answers To Those Big Questions Are Very, Very Depressing.

A: Socrates Is A Man. B: All Men Are Mortal. C: All Men Are Socrates.

When I Was Kidnapped, My Parents Snapped Into Action. They Rented Out My Room.

In Every Generation There Are A Few People Who Are Authentically Funny. The Cosmetics Change. You May Not Be Able To Articulate It, And You May Laugh At Them And Get A Certain Amount Of Enjoyment. But When You're Asleep At Night, And You Wake Up At 3 In The Morning, And You're Alone In Your Bed, You Know Who's Really Funny.

She Wore A Short Skirt And A Tight Sweater And Her Figure Described A Set Of Parabolas That Could Cause Cardiac Arrest In A Yak.

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.

When You Make The Film, There's A Big Difference Between When You're In Your Own Home At The Typewriter, And When You're Standing On A Mountain, Or On A Street Corner, And Buses Are Coming By-it's A Different Reality. You Make A Million Changes That Were Never In The Script, But That Reality Dictates.

If I Had My Life To Live Over, I Wish I Could Be A Great Pianist Or Something.

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

He Adored New York City. He Idolized It All Out Of Proportion... No, Make That: He - He Romanticized It All Out Of Proportion. Yes. 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.

Black And White

The Universe Is Merely A Fleeting Idea In God's Mind -- A Pretty Uncomfortable Thought, Particularly If You've Just Made A Down Payment On A House.

During The Course Of The Year A Number Of Ideas Just Come Up Automatically. I Could Be Walking Down The Street. Or Shaving. An Idea Will Hit Me And I'll Write It Down. Then, When I'm Ready To Write, I Check My Little Matchbooks And Napkins And Find That It Is Good Or It's Pretty Terrible. There Are Other Times When I Don't Have Any Ideas And I'll Go Into A Room And Close The Door And I Sit And Sweat It Out For A Day Or A Month And Eventually I Come Up With [something].

Throughout History In The Theater And Film People Do Like Sarcastic Characters, And They Do Like Curmudgeons - If They're Amusing, They Do Like Them Despite The Fact That They're Vitriolic, Particularly If They're For The Right Thing. If You Can See That The Person Is A Decent Person And Is For The Right Thing, And Is Not Just A Nasty Person With Base Motives, But Someone Who Is A Decent Human But Expresses Himself.

Writing Is Great Because In The Writing You Never Have To... First Of All You Never Have To Leave Your Home. And You Never Have To Meet The Test Of Reality When You're Writing.

I'm A Comedian. I Make Comic Films And There Are Certain Ideas That Occur To Me That Are Comic, With Heavy, Serious Undertones. There Are Some Ideas That Are More Frivolous To Me. The Next Idea That Could Occur To Me Could Be Comedy About Death And Famine Or Something.

In New York State They Have A Strange Law That Says You Can't Get A Divorce Unless You Can Prove Adultery - And It's Weird, Because The Ten Commandments Say 'thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.' But New York State Says You Have To. Well, Finally, What Happened Was That My Wife Committed Adultery For Me. She's Always Been More Mechanically Inclined Than I Have.

Fantasy Is Seductive And Much More Wonderful Than Reality, But You Can't Take It To The Bank. It's Always An Escape. And If Used As An Escape, As In Attending A Movie Or A Show For A Circumscribed Period Of Time, It's Fine. When It Starts To Become Undifferentiated From Reality, It Leads To Big Trouble.

When It Comes To Sex There Are Certain Things That Should Always Be Left Unknown, And With My Luck, They Probably Will Be.

I've Never Felt Truth Was Beauty. Never. I've Always Felt That People Can't Take Too Much Reality. I Like Being In Ingmar Bergman's World. Or In Louis Armstrong's World. Or In The World Of The New York Knicks. Because It's Not This World. You Spend Your Whole Life Searching For A Way Out. You Just Get An Overdose Of Reality, You Know, And It's A Terrible Thing. I'm Always Fighting Against Reality.

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We Laughed Over It, And Hemingway Punched Me In The Mouth.

Honey! Bring Down A Copy Of My Will - And An Eraser!

To You I'm An Atheist; To God, I'm The Loyal Opposition.

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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.

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."

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

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I Was Raised In The Jewish Tradition, Taught Never To Marry A Gentile Woman, Shave On A Saturday Night And, Most Especially, Never To Shave A Gentile Woman On A Saturday Night.

Jewish Tradition

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When You Start Putting A Higher Value On Works Of Art Than People, You’re Forfeiting Your Humanity.

I Think That The Tendency For Most People Is To Fall Back On A Comic Interpretation Of Things Because Things Are So Sad, So Terrible. If You Didn't Laugh You'd Kill Yourself. But The Truth Of The Matter Is That Existence In General Is Very Very Tragic, Very Very Sad, Very Brutal And Very Unhappy.

A Stockbroker Is Someone Who Invests Other People's Money Until It Is All Gone.

If The World Is A Progressively Realized Community Of Interpretation, Then Either Quadruplictity Will Drink Procrastination Or, Provided That The Nothing Negates, Boredom Will Ensue Seldom More Often Than Frequently.

Procrastination

Once The Movie's Over, There's Not Much Point. When The Thing Is Edited, Mixed, And Color-corrected, And You've Finished It... In My Case, I Never Read Anything About It, I Never Think About It.

I Don't Know What The Hell I'm Doing Here. I'm 237 Years Old, I Should Be Collecting Social Security.

[an Audience Conditioned By A Lifetime Of Television-watching Is So Corrupted That] Their Standards Have Been Systematically Lowered Over The Years. These Guys Sit In Front Of Their Sets And The Gamma Rays Eat The White Cells Of Their Brains Out!

Television Watching

I Can't With Any Conscience Argue For New York With Anyone. It's Like Calcutta. But I Love The City In An Emotional, Irrational Way, Like Loving Your Mother Or Your Father Even Though They're A Drunk Or A Thief. I've Loved The City My Whole Life - To Me, It's Like A Great Woman.

Is Old Age Really So Terrible? Not If You've Brushed Your Teeth Faithfully.

I Sued American Apparel Because They Calculatingly Took My Name, My Likeness And Image And Used Them Publicly To Promote Their Business.

Believing Would Be Easier If God Would Show Himself By Depositing A Million Dollars In A Swiss Bank Account In My Name

End Production Today. Wrap Party As Usual A Little Sad. Slow Danced With Scarlett. Broke Her Toe. Not My Fault. When She Dipped Me Back, I Stepped On It. Penélope [cruz] And Javier [bardem] Anxious To Work With Me Again. Said If I Ever Come Up With Another Screenplay To Try And Find Them. Goodbye Drink With Rebecca [hall]. Sentimental Moment. Everyone In Cast And Crew Chipped In And Bought Me A Ballpoint Pen.

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.

I Was A Smart Kid And I Was Not Understood By My Parents.

We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices.

I Do Feel It's Important To Have Some Kind Of Faith In Something, But [it Is] Impossible For Many Of Us. I Personally Don't Have Any Faith In Anything, But It's Great If You Can.

I've Inherited The Worst Of Each Parent. I Have My Father's Hypochondria And Lack Of Concentration. I Have His Amorality. I Have Everything Bad That He Had. Then I Have My Mother's Surly, Pill-like, Complaining, Whining Attitude.

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.

No Matter What The Shrinks, Or The Pundits, Or The Self-help Books Tell You, When It Comes To Love, It's Luck.

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

There Are Drawbacks In Being Famous Too, But You Can Live With Those. They're Not Life-threatening. If The Paparazzi Are Outside Your Restaurant Or Your House - And Actors Make Such A Big Thing Of It And Scurry Into Cars And Drape Things - You Think They're Going To Be Crucified Or Something. It's Not A Big Deal. You Can Get Used To That. It's Not So Terrible.

I Want To Tell You A Terrific Story About Oral Contraception. I Asked This Girl To Sleep With Me And She Said 'no.

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

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

I'm A Terrible Musician. While The Band Members Are Great, I'm Tolerated And Affectionately Regarded Because I Do Movies, But If I Had To Make My Living As A Musician I Would Starve. I'm Like A Sunday Tennis Player.

. . . They Confuse Everything I Do With My Life.

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.

I Never Start Editing A Film Until It's Completely Shot; I Don't Edit Along The Way, Ever. When It's Finished I Come In Here [screening Room] And We Start With Reel One, Scene One And Start Editing Shot By Shot By Shot Until We're Finished.

You Know, It's One Thing About Intellectuals, They Prove That You Can Be Absolutely Brilliant And Have No Idea What's Going On.

Relationships Are Really What Interest Me The Most. And I Think, In The End, They Interest Most People The Most. Even When You Read Tolstoy Or Something, Basically They're About Man And Woman Relationships.

I Took A Puff Of The Wrong Cigarette At A Fraternity Dance Once, And The Cops Had To Get Me, Y'know. I Broke Two Teeth Trying To Give A Hickie To The Statue Of Liberty.

There Are Two Important Things In The World, The First Is Sex. The Other Isn't All That Important.

You Can Be Distracted By Your Love Life, By The Baseball Game, Movies, By The Nonsense. "can I Get My Kid Into This Private School? Can I Get This Girl To Go Out With Me Saturday Night? Am I Going To Get The Promotion In My Office?" All This Stuff, But In The End The Universe Burns Out. So I Think It's Completely Meaningless.

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.

Eternal Nothingness Is Fine If You Happen To Be Dressed For It.

When You Work From City To City Or Country To Country, You Work The Same Way; The Working Method Is The Same.

The Movie Is Usually, For Me, Something Organic That Grows All The Time. I Sit Home And Write It, And I'm In An Isolated, Four-walled Environment, And I Don't Know What's Going On. I Just Write It, And It's Appearing In My Head In Some Idealized Way Where Every Single Moment Works, And Every Little Thing Is Perfect, Because It's In My Head.

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?

If Only God Would Give Me Some Clear Sign! Like Making A Large Deposit In My Name At A Swiss Bank.

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.

I Don't Want To Move To A City Where The Only Cultural Advantage Is Being Able To Make A Right Turn On A Red Light.

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.

More Than At 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. I Speak, By The Way, Not With Any Sense Of Futility, But With A Panicky Conviction Of The Absolute Meaninglessness Of Existence Which Could Easily Be Misinterpreted As Pessimism. It Is Not. It Is Merely A Healthy Concern For The Predicament Of Modern Man.

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

I Don't Believe In The After Life, Although I Am Bringing A Change Of Underwear.

You Can't Ride Two Horses With One Behind.

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

I Learned A Few Things On My Own Since, And Modified Some Of The Things He Taught Me, But Everything, Unequivocally, That I Learned About Comedy Writing I Learned From Danny Simon.

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.

There's Nothing Good About Getting Older-absolutely Nothing-because The Amount Of Wisdom And Experience You Gain Is Negligible Compared To What You Lose. You Do Gain A Couple Of Things-you Gain A Little Bittersweet And Sour Wisdom From Your Heartbreaks And Failures And Things-but What You Lose Is So Catastrophic In Every Way.

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

Tradition Is The Illusion Of Permanance.

If God Exists, I Hope He Has A Good Excuse.

A Man That Has Never Lied To A Woman Has No Respect For Her Feelings.

Until You've Been Kissed On A Rainy Parisian Afternoon - You've Never Been Kissed.

Never Been Kissed

If My Films Make One More Person Miserable, I'll Feel I Have Done My Job.

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.

Everyone Wants To Get Out Of Living Where They're Living Now, Because Life Is A Pretty Tough Proposition And Not Much Fun. But When You Think Back To Earlier Times, You Only Extrapolate The Nice Things.

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.

When I Was A Young Man, My Friends And I And All Of Us In New York Were Very Influenced By French Cinema. French Cinema Played An Enormous Influence On Those Of Us Who Wanted To Be Filmmakers.

If You Don't Fail Now And Again, It's A Sign You're Playing It Safe.

Playing It Safe

Some Men Are Heterosexual And Some Men Are Bisexual And Some Men Don't Think About Sex At All ... You Know, They Become Lawyers.

Don't You See The Rest Of The Country Looks Upon New York Like We're Left-wing, Communist, Jewish, Homosexual Pornographers? I Think Of Us That Way Sometimes And I Live Here.

Life Is Full Of Misery, Loneliness, And Suffering - And It's All Over Much Too Soon.

Me Sitting Down For Dinner With Ingmar Bergman Felt Like A House Painter Sitting Down With Picasso.

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.

That’s One Of The Nice Things About Writing, Or Any Art; If The Thing’s Real, It Just Lives. All The Attendant Hoopla About It, The Success Over It Or The Critical Rejection—none Of That Really Matters. In The End, The Thing Will Survive Or Not On Its Own Merits. Not That Immortality Via Art Is Any Big Deal. Truffaut Died, And We All Felt Awful About It, And There Were The Appropriate Eulogies, And His Wonderful Films Live On. But It’s Not Much Help To Truffaut.

This Sounds So Bleak When I Say It, But We Need Some Delusions To Keep Us Going. And The People Who Successfully Delude Themselves Seem Happier Than The People Who Can't.

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.

Don't Knock Masturbation. It's Sex With Someone I Love.

Enthusiasm Is A Good Engine, But It Needs Intelligence For A Driver.

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.

Sex Without Love Is An Empty Experience, But As Empty Experiences Go, It's One Of The Best.

Your Audience Teaches You How To Be Funny.

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

I Can Levitate Birds. No One Cares.

I Wonder If Socrates And Plato Took A House On Crete During The Summer.

I Can't Imagine Any Director Directing A Screenplay Of Mine, Because The Great Directors All Have Very Personal Styles, And The Ones That Don't Are Not Very Interesting Directors.

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...

[the Universe Is] Haphazard, Morally Neutral, And Unimaginably Violent.

There Is Dignity In Suffering; Nobility In Pain; But Failure Is A Salted Wound, That Burns And Burns Again!

Honey, There's A Spider In Your Bathroom The Size Of A Buick.

Men Learn To Love The Woman They Are Attracted To. Women Learn To Become Attracted To The Man They Fall In Love With.

Falling In Love

I'm Twelve Years Old. I Run Into A Synagogue. I Ask The Rabbi The Meaning Of Life. He Tells Me The Meaning Of Life But He Tells It To Me In Hebrew. I Don't Understand Hebrew. Then He Wants To Charge Me $600 For Hebrew Lessons.

I Have A Hyper-active Imagination, My Mind Tends To Jump Around A Little, And I Have Some Trouble Between Fantasy And Reality.

I Took A Test In Existentialism. I Left All The Answers Blank And Got 100.

Years Ago I Was On Television Having A Discussion With Billy Graham About Atheism. He Was Saying, Even If You're Right And I'm Wrong, And There's Nothing After, I Will Have Had A Better Life Than You, Because I Do Believe There Was Something. And I Couldn't Argue With That, Even Though I Wanted To.

If You're Not Failing Every Now And Again, It's A Sign You're Not Doing Anything Very Innovative.

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.

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.

When I First Started, There Were Writers That I Looked Up To That I Felt Very Influenced By And Very Respectful Toward Their Work And Their Opinion Of My Work.

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

To Me Nature Is... Spiders And Bugs, And Big Fish Eating Little Fish, And Plants Eating Plans, And Animals Eating... It's Like An Enormous Restaurant, That's The Way I See It.

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.

As The Author You Know How You Want It To Appear On Screen And It's Always The Content Dictating The Form.

My Wife And I Thought We Were In Love, But It Turned Out To Be Benign

What I Do Know About Physics Is That To A Man Standing On The Shore, Time Passes Quicker Than To A Man On A Boat - Especially If The Man On The Boat Is With His Wife.

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

You Can't Control Life. It Doesn't Wind Up Perfectly. Only-only Art You Can Control. Art And Masturbation. Two Areas In Which I Am An Absolute Expert.

I Always Write The Same Way. I Always Write With A Yellow Pad And A Ballpoint Pen On My Bed. And Then I Go And Type It Up Afterwards. I've Always Done That. Those Things Become Habitual.

A Deranged Person Is Supposed To Have The Strength Of Ten Men. I Have The Strength Of One Small Boy... With Polio.

I'll Work By Myself For Years And Then I'll Think It'll Be Fun To Et One Of My Friends Like Marshall Brickman Or Doug Mcgrath Into A Room And Not Be Alone For The Writing Of The Thing; To Have The Pleasure Of Taking Walks And Get Lunch Together; Its Sort Of A Fun Process And Then I Do It And Then I Get Back On My Own For A While Until I Feel The Need To Do It Again.

Let's Say There Was No Terrorism Whatsoever And We Were All Very Nice To One Another And We Were All Kind, We Still Would Be Faced With An Extremely Cruel And Hostile Universe And Existence And So I'm A Great Pessimist And I Feel That It's Impossible Really To Be Happy, And That The Best You Can Hope For Is To Be Distracted.

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

I'm Not A Big Believer In The Sense Of Jews Having A Monopoly On Comedy.

It's Funny. Maria Elena And I, We Are Meant For Each Other And Not Meant For Each Other, It's A Contradiction.

Of All Human Weakness Obsession Is The Most Dangerous. And The Silliest.

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.

I Can Do A Limited Amount Of Things And That's What I Do And I Feel Comfortable Doing It And I Have No Particular Desire To Do Anything Else As An Actor.

Life Is Divided Into The Horrible And The Miserable.

I Always Feel The Cynicism Is Reality With Maybe An Alternate Spelling Or Something Because I Feel That I Have Real Perspective On This Particular Issue Of Punishment In Society.

Anything Worth Knowing Cannot Be Understood By The Human Mind.

Money Is Not Everything, But It Is Better Than Having One's Health.

I'm Really A Timid Person - I Was Beaten Up By Quakers

Some Drink Deeply From The River Of Knowledge. Others Only Gargle.

I Asked The Girl If She Could Bring A Sister For Me. She Did. Sister Maria Teresa. It Was A Very Slow Evening. We Discussed The New Testament. We Agreed That He Was Very Well Adjusted For An Only Child.

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

My Father Worked For The Same Firm For 12 Years. They Fired Him And Replaced Him With A Tiny Gadget That Does Everything My Father Does, Only Much Better. The Depressing Thing Is My Mother Ran Out And Bought One

And In All Of Babylonia There Was Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth, 'til The Prophets Bade The Multitudes Get A Grip On Themselves And Shape Up.

As The Poet Said, 'only God Can Make A Tree,' Probably Because It's So Hard To Figure Out How To Get The Bark On.

I Like Filming In New York A Lot Myself, But London Is Accommodating To Me; The Weather's Very Good There And The Conditions For Shooting And The Financial Conditions, The Artistic Conditions Are Good, So It's A Pleasant Place To Shoot.

The Talent For Being Happy Is Appreciating And Liking What You Have, Instead Of What You Don't Have.

I Can Make Films. And Some Of Them Come Out Good, And Some Of Them Come Out Better, And Some Of Them Come Out Worse. But I've Been Very Lucky Over The Years To Be Able To Sustain The Length Of Career That I've Had.

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.

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

In Real Life I'm Not The Character I Play In My Films. I'm Reasonably Competent, I Work Very Hard, I'm Disciplined, I Lead A Very Middle Class Life. I Work In The Mornings, I Have Lunch, I Practise My Clarinet, I Go To The Movies, I Eat Out In Restaurants Or Watch Ball Games On Television Or At The Ball Games.

In Real Life, Keaton Believes In God. But She Also Believes That The Radio Works Because There Are Tiny People Inside It.

If You Want To Make God Laugh, Tell Him About Your Plans.

Whosoever Loveth Wisdom Is Righteous, But He That Keepeth Company With Fowl Is Weird.

Retirement Is A Very Subjective Thing. There Are Guys I Know Who Retire And They're Very Happy And They Never Miss Work At All. I Can't See Myself Retiring And Fondling A Dog Every Day. I Like To Get Up And Work And Go Out. I Have Too Much Energy Or Too Much Nervous Anxiety Or Something. So I Don't See Myself Retiring. Maybe I Will Suddenly Get A Stroke Or A Heart Attack And I Will Be Forced To Retire, But If My Health Holds Out I Don't Expect To Retire.

I Will Not Eat Oysters. I Want My Food Dead - Not Sick, Not Wounded - Dead.

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.

People Still Have Existential Anxiety. It Just May Not Be Expressed In Hebraic Idiom.

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Charles M. Schwab

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