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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.

-Woody Allen

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I Always Feel, I

Woody Allen

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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.

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Larger Than Life

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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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He's A Politician. That's A Notch Below Child Molester.

The Meaning Of Life Is That Nobody Knows The Meaning Of Life.

Meaning Of Life

[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.

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

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I Write The Script; Nobody Sees It, Not The People That Put The Money In The Picture. I Cast Who I Want, And Make The Film. That's Why I've Always Felt The Only Thing Standing Between Me And Greatness, Is Me. There's No Excuse For Me Not To Be Great Except That I'm Not.

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

She Had Been Critical Of His New Torch Song, "a Side Order Of Heartache, Please," Suggesting It Could Be Used As A Good Way To Break In Their New Paper Shredder.

What A World. It Could Be So Wonderful If It Wasn't For Certain People.

When I Started Out, I Was A Television Writer, And We Wrote A Television Show That Was On Live Every Week. And You Didn't Have The Luxury Of Coming In And Waiting To Be Inspired. You Came In And You Had To Write. And You Wrote, Because It Was Going To Be Live On The Air. So I Can Do That.

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.

When I Get Up In The Morning, I Go And I Work With Beautiful Women And Charming Men And Funny Comedians And Dramatic Artists. And I'm Presented With Costumes And Great Music To Choose From And Sets. I Travel A Certain Amount Of Places, So I've Been Living In A Bubble. And I Like It.

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.

A Fast Word About Oral Contraception. I Was Involved In An Extremely Good Example Of Oral Contraception Two Weeks Ago. I Asked A Girl To Go To Bed With Me, She Said 'no'.

Last Year I Had Difficulty With My Income Tax. I Tried To Take My Analyst Off As A Business Deduction. The Government Said It Was Entertainment. We Compromised Finally And Made It A Religious Contribution.

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

I'm A Teleological, Existential Agnostic.

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

Man Consists Of Two Parts, His Mind And His Body, Only The Body Has More Fun.

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

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

I Think Frank Capra Was A Much Craftier Filmmaker, A Wonderful Filmmaker. He Had Enormous Technique, And He Knew How To Manipulate The Public Quite Brilliantly.

The Study Of Economy Usually Shows Us That The Best Time For Purchase Was Last Year.

Sex On Twitter Can't Hurt You - Unless You Fall Off.

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.

When A Film Is Reviled, You Open A Film And People Say "oh, It's The Stupidest Thing, It's The Worst Movie." You Think: Oh, Nobody's Going To Ever Speak To You Again. But, It Doesn't Happen. Nobody Cares. You Know, They Read It And They Say "oh, They Hated Your Film." You Care, At The Time. But They Don't. Nobody Else Cares.

For Some Reason It Gives People Pleasure To Equate The Life Of Certain Movie Actors Or Actresses With Their Actual Lives.

When You Are Dead, It Is Hard To Find The Light Switch.

It's A Wonderful Thing To Be Able To Create Your Own World Whenever You Want To.

If God Is Everywhere, I Had Concluded, Then He Is In Food. Therefore, The More I Ate The Godlier I Would Become. Impelled By This New Religious Fervor, I Glutted Myself Like A Fanatic.

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.

Today I Saw A Red And Yellow Sunset And Thought, How Insignificant I Am! Of Course, I Thought That Yesterday Too, And It Rained.

Life Is For The Living.

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

Don't Worry, I Know Almost Exactly What I'm Doing.

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

I Prefer The Magic To Reality, And Have Since I Was 5 Years Old. Hopefully, I Can Continue To Make Films And Constantly Escape Into Them.

It's A Wonderful Thing To Be Able To Create Your Own World Whenever You Want To. Writing Is Very Pleasurable, Very Seductive, And Very Therapeutic. Time Passes Very Fast When I'm Writing-really Fast. I'm Puzzling Over Something, And Time Just Flies By. It's An Exhilarating Feeling. How Bad Can It Be? It's Sitting Alone With Fictional Characters. You're Escaping From The World In Your Own Way And That's Fine. Why Not?

Exhilarating Feeling

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

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

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.

Every Hooker I Ever Speak To Tells Me That It Beats The Hell Out Of Waitressing.

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

There Are Worse Things Than Death. Many Of Them Playing At A Theater Near You.

As I Got More Confident, I Was Able To Let Actors Improvise, And Do Long Takes. It's 10%, 5% You Learn And Experience. The Rest You Just Have Or You Don't Have.

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

I Believe There Is Something Out There Watching Us. Unfortunately, It's The Government.

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

Dying Is Like Making Love, Except You Don't Get Naseous Afterwards.

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

If I Had My Choice In Life I Would Have Had The Gifts Of Tennessee Williams Or Eugene O'neill. Unfortunately My Gifts Lie In Comedy And So Comedy Comes Fairly Easy To Me And I Occasionally Have An Idea For A Very Serious Piece And I Do It, But The Ideas Don't Come That Readily To Me.

You Can't Anticipate In The Room The Riches Of What You Encounter When You're Location Hunting For A Movie.

God, You Jews Are Truly Exotic." Exotic? She Should Only Know The Greenblatts. Or Mr. And Mrs. Milton Sharpstein, My Father's Friends. Or For That Matter, My Cousin Tovah. Exotic? I Mean, They're Nice, But Hardly Exotic With Their Endless Bickering Over The Best Way To Combat Indigestion Or How Far Back To Sit From The Television Set.

I Am Plagued By Doubts.

There's An Old Joke - Um... Two Elderly Women Are At A Catskill Mountain Resort, And One Of 'em Says, "boy, The Food At This Place Is Really Terrible." The Other One Says, "yeah, I Know; And Such Small Portions." Well, That's Essentially How I Feel About Life - Full Of Loneliness, And Misery, And Suffering, And Unhappiness, And It's All Over Much Too Quickly.

I'm A Creature Of The New York City Streets.

A Wife Lasts Only For The Length Of The Marriage, But An Ex-wife Is There For The Rest Of Your Life.

All I Have In My Life Is My Imagination

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

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

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?

There Is An Advantage In Having A Routine And Working With The Same People When You Can And In Writing As A Regular Thing And Filming As A Regular Thing. That Routine Pays Off For You. You Get A Lot Of Productivity That Way, Rather Than Sitting Around Waiting For Inspiration And Waiting For The Perfect Thing To Happen. I Would Be Much Less Productive That Way.

I Was Thrown Out Of College For Cheating On The Metaphysics Exam; I Looked Into The Soul Of The Boy Sitting Next To Me.

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

I Loathed Every Day And Regret Every Moment I Spent In A School.

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.

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.

I Do Believe That Reality Is Dreadful And That You Are Forced To Choose It In The End Or Go Crazy, But That It Kills You.

Why Not? Life Is Short, Life Is Dull, Life Is Full Of Pain - And This Is A Chance For Something Special.

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

If My Soul Exists Without My Body I Am Convinced All My Clothes Will Be Loose-fitting

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

Basically My Wife Was Immature. I'd Be At Home In The Bath And She'd Come In And Sink My Boats.

I Don't Know The Question, But Sex Is Definitely The Answer.

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

Please Forgive Me. My Pedicurist Had A Stroke. She Fell Forward Onto The Orange Stick And Plunged It Into My Toe. It Required Bandaging.

Am I My Brother's Keeper? Yes. Interestingly, In My Case, I Share That Honor With The Prospect Park Zoo.

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.

I've Had A Very Productive Life. I've Worked Very Hard, I've Never Fallen Prey To Depression. I'm Not Sure I Could Have Done All Of That Without Being In Psychoanalysis.

Productive Life

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.

I Don't Want To Be Immortal Through My Works. I Want To Be Immortal By Not Dying.

Sex Is The Most Fun You Can Have Without Laughing.

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.

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

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

You Will Notice That What We Are Aiming At When We Fall In Love Is A Very Strange Paradox. The Paradox Consists Of The Fact That, When We Fall In Love, We Are Seeking To Re-find All Or Some Of The People To Whom We Were Attached As Children. On The Other Hand, We Ask Our Beloved To Correct All Of The Wrongs That These Early Parents Or Siblings Inflicted Upon Us. So That Love Contains In It The Contradiction: The Attempt To Return To The Past And The Attempt To Undo The Past.

Falling In Love

In Fact, When They Wake Up In The Morning, They're Jack Nicholson Or Robert De Niro Or Josh Brolin. And It's Built-in, But They Think It's All This Other Stuff. But It's Not. They'd Be Great If They Didn't Think About Their Part Or If They Did Think About It.

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.

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

The Key Point About A Demonstration Is That It Must Be Seen. Hence The Term "demonstration." If A Person Demonstrates Privately In His Own Home, This Is Not Technically A Demonstration But Merely "acting Silly" Or "behaving Like An Ass.

It's Easier To Direct. If You Direct Something Poorly And Re-shoot It The Next Day, Stage It Better, Make It Work Better, You Have A Lot Of Possibilities. You Can Edit It In Certain Ways So That It Works, But There's No Getting Around Weaknesses Of The Script.

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.

Sex Is Better Than Talk. Ask Anybody In This Bar. Talk Is What You Suffer Through So You Can Get To Sex.

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

For God Sakes, This Is A Woman I Was Married To For 10 Years. We Made Love. I'd Hold Her Head Over The Toilet Bowl When She Threw Up.

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

You Rely Too Much On Brain. The Brain Is The Most Overrated Organ.

I Don't Inhale Because It Gives You Cancer, But I Look So Incredibly Handsome With A Cigarette That I Can't Not Hold One.

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

In A Relationship, It Is Better To Be The Leaver Than The Leavee.

90% Of Success In Life Is Showing Up

Success In Life

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

I Feel Humor Is Important For Those Two Reasons: That It Is A Little Bit Of Refreshment Like Music, And That Women Have Told Me Over The Years That It Is Very, Very Important To Them.

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

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.

Have You Ever Taken A Serious Political Stand On Anything? Yeah. Sure. For Twenty-four Hours Once I Refused To Eat Grapes.

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.

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.

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.

I Keep Wondering If There Is An Afterlife, And If There Is Will They Be Able To Break A Twenty?

Marriage? That's For Life! It's Like Cement!

My Grandfather Had A Wonderful Funeral... On The Buffet Table There Was A Replica Of The Deceased In Potato Salad.

Your Audience Teaches You How To Be Funny.

Skeptic That I Was As An Adolescent, I Had Recently Come To Believe In A Supreme Being After Thumbing Through A Victoria's Secret Catalogue.

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?

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.

Visually I've Always Liked The 20s 30s For Film. I Do These Because I Like The Music. I Like The Clothes. I Like The Way The Women And The Guys Look. There Are Soldiers And Sailors And Gangsters With The Machine Guns In Their Violin Cases. It's A Very Colorful Era Of New York, Full Of Great Theater And Great Nightclubs And Great Jazz.

I Can Understand That An Audience, Buying A Ticket To See A Picture Of Mine, Wants To See Something Funny Because They Feel Confident That At Least I Have A Fighting Chance To Make A Funny Film When I Make A Film, Whereas If I Make A Dramatic Film There's One Chance In A Thousand That It's Really Going To Come Out Great, So I Understand How They Feel About That And They're Completely Right.

Abysmal Vermin That I Am, I Couldn't Of Course Tell Her That It Was Her Incredible Mother That I Wanted To See Again… I Knew Only As I Drove Through The Cold, Night Autumn Air That Somewhere Freud, Sophocles And Eugene O’neill Were Laughing.

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

I Don't Respond Well To Mellow, You Know What I Mean, I Have A Tendency To... If I Get Too Mellow, I Ripen And Then Rot.

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.

Some People Think About Sex All The Time; Some People Think Of Sex Some Of The Time; And Some People Never Think About Sex: They Become Lawyers.

Change Is Almost Always Negative. Things Degenerate.

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

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

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.

Life Is Unresolved, Confusing, Bewildering, Puzzling, Ambiguous. You Don't Really Know What's Going To Happen. The Future Is Uncertain For Everybody.

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

Sygmnd Was A Poor Austrian Who'd Lost All The Vowels In His Name In A Boating Accident.

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

I Have A Limitless Amount Of Great Music At My Disposal And It's Very, Very Pleasurable Because When The Music Goes On The Film It's Amazing How Much It Livens Up The Film And Gives It An Emotional Kick In The Pants, Sort Of.

Astronomers Say The Universe Is Finite, Which Is A Comforting Thought For Those People Who Can't Remember Where They Leave Things.

When You Make The Film, It's Like A Chef Who Works On The Meal. After You're Working All Day In The Kitchen And Dicing And Cutting And Putting The Sauces On, You Don't Want To Eat It. That's How I Always Feel About The Films. I Work On It For A Year. I've Written It, I've Worked With The Actors, I've Edited, Put The Music In. I Just Never Want To See It Again.

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

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

I'm Awash In Self-contempt!

I Tended To Place My Wife Under A Pedestal.

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.

A "bay Area Bisexual" Told Me I Didn't Quite Coincide With Either Of Her Desires.

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.

"boy, The Food At This Place Is Really Terrible." The Other One Says, "yeah, I Know; And Such Small Portions." Well, That's Essentially How I Feel About Life - Full Of Loneliness, And Misery, And Suffering, And Unhappiness, And It's All Over Much Too Quickly.

Achilles Only Had An Achilles Heel, I Have An Entire Achilles Body.

Students Achieving Oneness Will Move On To Twoness.

I Can't Understand Why More People Aren't Bisexual. It Would Double Your Chances For A Date On Saturday Night.

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

Who Bothers To Cook Tv Dinners? I Suck Them Frozen.

I Call That Mind Free Which Jealously Guards Its Intellectual Rights And Powers, Which Calls No Man Master, Which Does Not Content Itself With A Passive Or Hereditary Faith, [and] Receives New Truth As An Angel From Heaven.

I Read In Self-defense.

Doing Abominations Is Against The Law, Particularly If The Abominations Are Done While Wearing A Lobster Bib.

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.

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.

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

Magic Has Always Been Of A Great Interest Of Mine. I Was An Amateur Magician When I Was Young. I Used To Practice And Read Up On It A Lot. I'm Well-aware Of The History Of Magic.

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.

You Mellow Too Much You Ripen And Rot.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

When I Was Born My Mother Was Terribly Disappointed. Not That She Wanted A Girl - She Wanted A Divorce.

History Is The Same Thing Over And Over Again.

Fitness Motivational

Temporary Insanity

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.

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

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.

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.

The Best Things In Life Are Censored.

Best Things In Life

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.

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.

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.

Every Success Is Built On The Ability To Do Better Than Good Enough. As You Climb The Ladder Of Success, Be Sure It's Leaning Against The Right Building. Eighty Percent Of Success Is Showing Up.

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

Child Molestation Is A Touchy Subject... Read The Papers! Half The Country's Doing It!

How Am I Immature? Intellectually, Emotionally, And Sexually. Yeah, But In What Other Ways?

See, I Never Gain An Ounce, Because, You Know, My Anxiety Acts Like Aerobics.

If There Is Reincarnation, I'd Like To Come Back As Warren Beatty's Fingertips.

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.

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.

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.

I Think Crime Pays. The Hours Are Good, You Travel A Lot

Sometimes Some Of The Best Moments Are Contributed By The Actors Being Creative, With Their Own Improvisations.

When I'm Writing Something, If There's A Part That's Good For Me, Then I'll Play It. Otherwise, I Don't. And I Notice That There Are Less And Less Parts For Me In My Own Writing.

I'm In Show Business. I'm Not Like A Poor Factory Worker Who'd Been Laid Off.

Factory Workers

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

Better Not Think Too Much. Relying More On The Body: It Is More Trustworthy.

In Certain Areas I Don't Function Well And In Other Areas I Function Very Well. I'm Very Good Professionally. I Have Good Discipline, I'm Able To Write Every Day And Do Films And Not Go Six Times Over The Budget. I Mean I'm A Coherent Person, But I Also Don't Like To Go Through Tunnels When I Travel. I'm Claustrophobic.

I Don't Believe In An Afterlife, But I'm Taking An Extra Pair Of Underwear Just In Case.

Remember, If You Smoke After Sex You're Doing It Too Fast.

There Will Be No Major Solution To The Suffering Of Humanity Until We Reach Some Understanding Of Who We Are, What The Purpose Of Creation Was, What Happens After Death. Until Those Questions Are Resolved We Are Caught.

I Do Occasionally Envy The Person Who Is Religious Naturally, Without Being Brainwashed Into It Or Suckered Into It By All The Organized Hustles.

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

My Luck Is Getting Worse And Worse. Last Night, For Instance, I Was Mugged By A Quaker.

Humorists Always Sit At The Children's Table.

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.

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.

Heaven Knows, We All Make Mistakes. That's Life - And Chess.

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Charles M. Schwab

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