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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.

-Woody Allen

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I'm Twelve Years Old.

Woody Allen

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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.

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

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

The Baby Is Fine. The Only Problem Is That He Looks Like Edward G. Robinson.

Capital Punishment Would Be More Effective As A Preventive Measure If It Were Administered Prior To The Crime.

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"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.

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

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It Figures You've Got To Hate Yourself If You've Got Any Integrity At All.

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?

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There's Nothing Like The Discovery Of An Unknown Work By A Great Thinker To Set The Intellectual Community Atwitter And Cause Academics To Dart About Like Those Things One Sees When Looking At A Drop Of Water Under A Microscope.

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

Some Of The Best Memories Of My Childhood That I Have Are The Times That I Played Hooky From School So I Could Spend My Days In The Public Library Reading All The Wonderful Books At My Disposal.

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

As A Boy, I Was Ashamed To Wear Glasses. I Memorized The Eye Chart, And Then On The Test They Asked Essay Questions.

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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.

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

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

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.

When One Chooses To Be A Writer, Psychologically There's A Reason For That Because You Like The Isolation And You Like To Be By Yourself And You Are By Nature Timid.

Photons Have Mass? I Didn’t Even Know They Were Catholic.

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

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

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 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.

My Films Are A Form Of Psychoanalysis, Except That It Is I Who Am Paid, Which Changes Everything.

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.

No One Ever Wants The Whole Script. I Give The Whole Script To People Who Require The Whole Script But To Those People Who Don't Require The Whole Script I Don't Give It To Them And No One Cares. They're Relieved Not To Have To Read Extra Pages That They're Not In.

Sex Is The Most Fun You Can Have Without Laughing.

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.

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

If The [actors] Are Working, And I Have A Dinner Engagement, I Don't Do 20 Takes. I Do Five Takes And Go Home. I Want To Go To Dinner.

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

Since I Was A Kid, I Could Make Up Stories, I Could Make Up Funny Jokes And I Could Always Do It. When I'm Walking Down The Street Or Having Dinner, Ideas Will Hit Me, And I Write Them Down On Matchbooks Or Napkins And Throw Them In The Draw.

I Have One Last Request. Don't Use Embalming Fluid On Me; I Want To Be Stuffed With Crab Meat.

I Never Knew What Amazon Was. I've Never Seen Any Of Those Series, Even On Cable. I've Never Seen The Sopranos, Or Mad Men. I'm Out Every Night And When I Come Home, I Watch The End Of The Baseball Or Basketball Game, And There's Charlie Rose And I Go To Sleep.

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

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.

I Took A Speed-reading Course And Read War And Peace In Twenty Minutes. It Involves Russia.

If I Was To See Any Of My Films Now I Would Feel, Oh God You Know It's Awful I Could Do That So Much Better Now. Look At All The Terrible Things I Did And All The Mistakes And All The Compromises And All The Blunders I Made, And It Would Be Such A Terrible Experience For Me To See Them. So It's Better That I Put It Out And Move On To The Next Thing And Make It History As Quickly As Possible.

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.

Confidence Is What You Have Before You Understand The Problem.

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

In The Shower, With The Hot Water Coming Down, You've Left The Real World Behind, And Very Frequently Things Open Up For You. It's The Change Of Venue, The Unblocking The Attempt To Force The Ideas That's Crippling You When You're Trying To Write.

Gauguin Flew Into A Frenzy! He Held My Head Under The X-ray Machine For Ten Straight Minutes And For Several Hours After I Could Not Blink My Eyes In Unison." — "if The Impressionists Had Been Dentists

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.

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

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

People Say That Death Is A Part Of Life And There Must Be Something To It, But I Just See It As Bad News And I Want Everybody To Stop Sugarcoating It.

Students Achieving Oneness Will Move On To Twoness.

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

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...

You're A Genius! And The Proof Is That Both Common People And Intellectuals Find Your Work Completely Incoherent.

Love Is Too Weak A Word For What I Feel - I Luuurve You, You Know, I Loave You, I Luff You, Two F's, Yes.

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

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

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Robert A. Heinlein

Alexander Hamilton

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