Background Image

...

I Never Wanted To Or Expected To Make A Film Outside Of New York. New York Became Very, Very Expensive. The Same $18 Million Spent In Barcelona Or Rome Goes Much Further There.

-Woody Allen

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Never Wanted To

Woody Allen

...

I Never Wanted To Or Expected To Make A Film Outside Of New York. New York Became Very, Very Expensive. The Same $18 Million Spent In Barcelona Or Rome Goes Much Further There.

Views: 96557

Topic

More From Woody Allen

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.

My Father Owned A Small Piece Of Land. He Carried It With Him Wherever He Went.

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

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

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

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

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

These Were Always Obsessions Of Mine, Even As A Very Young Child. These Were Things That Interested Me As The Years Went On. My Friends Were More Preoccupied With Social Issues - Issues Such As Abortion, Racial Discrimination, And Communism - And Those Issues Just Never Caught My Interest. Of Course They Mattered To Me As A Citizen To Some Degree...but They Never Really Caught My Attention Artistically.

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?

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

The Content Dictates The Style All The Time. That's The Way It Is. If The Content Of The Film - As In Husbands And Wives - Is Highly Jagged, Neurotic, Fast-paced, Nervous New York Film, It Just Called For That Kind Of Shooting, Editing And Performance.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Sex Is The Most Fun You Can Have Without Laughing.

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

Another Good Thing About Being Poor Is That When You Are Seventy Your Children Will Not Have You Declared Legally Insane In Order To Gain Control Of Your Estate.

When A Doctor Makes A Mistake, It's Best To Bury The Subject.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Don't Like Theatrical Actors And Actresses. I Like People That Talk Like Real Human Beings.

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

What Is It About Death That Bothers Me? Probably The Hours.

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

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.

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

I Was Thrown Out Of Nyu For Cheating-with The Deans Wife

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.

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 French Make Two Mistakes About Me. They Think I'm An Intellectual Because I Wear These Glasses And They Think I'm An Artist Because My Films Lose Money.

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

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

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

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

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

Your Still Searching For Me In Every Woman. You'll Always Seek To Duplicate What We Had. You Know It.

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.

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

I Hope You're Getting This Down.

Dying Is One Of The Few Things That Can Be Done As Easily Lying Down.

My Relationship With American Audiences Is The Exact Same As It Always Has Been. They Never Came To See My Films, And They Don't Come Now.

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.

If You Pursue The Other Woman, It's A Losing Situation And It's Not Good For Your Relationship Or Your Marriage. If Your Marriage Is Open And You're Allowed To, That's No Good Either. There's No Way, Really In The End, To Be Happy Unless You Get Very Lucky.

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

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.

Having Sex Is Like Playing Bridge. If You Don't Have A Good Partner, You'd Better Have A Good Hand.

Love May Be The Answer, But Even Though You're Watching For The Solution, Intercourse Raises Some Rather Interesting Thoughts.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Idly. I Go To Sporting Events, Play My Clarinet. I Practise. But If You Work Every Day, A Certain Amount On A Steady Basis, The Work Accumulates.

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.

Ads Answered Out Of Desperation In The New York Review Of Books Proved Equally Futile As…the 'bay Area Bisexual' Told Me I Didn't Quite Coincide With Either Of Her Desires.

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

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

A Tree Never Hits An Automobile Except In Self Defense.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Think Hollywood Has Gone In A Disastrous Path. It's Terrible. The Years Of Cinema That Were Great Were The '30s, '40s, Not So Much The '50s...but Then The Foreign Films Took Over And It Was A Great Age Of Cinema As American Directors Were Influenced By Them And That Fueled The '50s And '60s And '70s.

I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know What I Don't Want

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.

I Didn't Know He Was Dead; I Thought He Was British.

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

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.

There's Nothing Wrong With You That A Little Prozac And A Polo Mallet Can't Cure.

I Always Thought It Would Be Very Funny If I Was A Blind Film Director.

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

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

I'd Never Join A Club That Would Allow A Person Like Me To Become A Member.

I'm Not Saying I Didn't Enjoy Myself, But I Didn't.

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.

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 It Turns Out That There Is A God...the Worst That You Can Say About Him Is That Basically He's An Underachiever.

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.

There Have Been Times When I've Thought About It - But With My Luck It Would Probably Turn Out To Be Only A Temporary Solution.

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.

Notes For A Ballet, The Spell: ... Suddenly Sigmund Hears The Flutter Of Wings, And A Group Of Wild Swans Flies Across The Moon ... Sigmund Is Astounded To See That Their Leader Is Part Swan And Part Woman - Unfortunately, Divided Lengthwise. She Enchants Sigmund, Who Is Careful Not To Make Any Poultry Jokes.

Even If God Exists, He's Done Such A Terrible Job, It's A Wonder People Don't Get Together And File A Class Action Suit Against Him.

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.

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.

The Wicked At Heart Probably Know Something.

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 California, They Don't Throw Their Garbage Away - They Make It Into Tv Shows.

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

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

My Education Was Dismal. I Went To A Series Of Schools For Mentally Disturbed Teachers.

Life Is Tough And It's Tough Whether You're Famous Or Not Famous. And In The End It's Probably Better To Be Famous Because The Perks Are Better. You Get Better Seats At The Basketball Game, And You Get Better Tables And Reservations Places. If I Call A Doctor On Saturday Morning I Can Get Him. There's A Lot Of Things, Indulgences That You Don't Get, If You're Not Famous. Now I'm Not Saying It's Fair. But I Can't Say That I Don't Enjoy It.

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.

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.

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

My Heart Says One Thing. My Head Says Another. Very Hard To Get Your Heart And Head Together In Life.

I'm So Excited-i Think Today I'm Going To Brush All My Teeth.

Jazz Is A Big Thing With Me. It's A Very Big Passion Of Mine, To Play It. I'm An Amateur Musician And I Love Everything About It. I Was Obsessed With Jazz When I Was 15 Years Old And I Know A Lot About It Because I've Loved It So Much.

He's A Genius, She's A Genius, Wow, You Know Alot Of Geniuses, You Should Meet Some Stupid People Sometime, You Might Learn 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.

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.

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

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

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.

Man Was Made In God`s Image. Do You Really Think God Has Red Hair And Glasses?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

They Were Doing The Dying Swan At The Ballet. And There Was A Rumor That Some Bookmarkers Had Drifted Into Town From Upstate New York And That They Had Fixed The Bullet. There Was A Lot Of Money Bet On The Swan To Live.

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

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.

What Do I Dislike About Death? Must Be The Hours.

One Filmmaker Makes Films That Are Deep, Intellectual, Profound And Confrontational. And The Other One Makes Purely Vacuous, Escapist Films. I'm Not Sure The One Who Makes Escapist Films Is Making A Poorer Contribution Than The One Who Makes The Deeper Films.

The Dictatorship Is Shut Up, Democracy Is Always Concerned.

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

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

Playing It Safe

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.

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.

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.

If You're Not Failing, You're Not Trying Anything.

Learning From Mistakes

I Don't Think My Parents Liked Me. They Put A Live Teddy Bear In My Crib.

It's All Through The Actors; I Cannot Write In That Idiom

Dear Mom And Dad, Leave $50,000 In A Bag Under The Bridge On Decatur Street. If There Is No Bridge On Decatur Street, Please Build One.

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

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

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?

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

I Didn't Go To Paris Until I Was A Grown-up In 1965. And When I Went To Paris, It Was The Paris I Knew Only From American Movies.

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.

Marriage Is The Death Of Hope.

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.

Comedians Have A Tendency To Have A Limited Range, They Tend To Do One Thing And Do It Very Well, But It's Limited.

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.

Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone. Every Once In Awhile He Needs A Salad.

American Films, It's A Money-making Industry. And In France, You Can Find Great Respect For Cinema As Art.

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

Life Is Hard For Insects. And Don't Think Mice Are Having Any Fun Either.

Maugham Then Offers The Greatest Advice Anyone Could Give To A Young Author: "at The End Of An Interrogation Sentence, Place A Question Mark. You'd Be Surprised How Effective It Can Be."

I Am Thankful For Laughter, Except When Milk Comes Out Of My Nose.

Nothing Worth Knowing Can Be Understood With The Mind.

When You Write The Script, You're Home In A Room By Yourself, And You're Writing, And There's No Connection With The Real Performing World. So You Get A Lot Of Things Wrong And Make A Lot Of Mistakes And Make A Lot Of Bad Choices.

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

Cynicism Is Reality With An Alternate Spelling.

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.

"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 Don't Have To 'freedom-kiss' My Wife When What I Really Want To Do Is French-kiss Her.

You're So Good Looking I Can Barely Keep My Eyes On The Meter.

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

I Never Considered Myself An Artist. I Aspire To Be An Artist, But I Never Thought I Had The Depth Or Substance Or Gift To Be An Artist. I Do Think I Have Some Talent, But It Doesn't Go As Far As Being An Artist.

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

Why Ruin A Good Story With The Truth?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Standard Mathematics Has Recently Been Rendered Obsolete By The Discovery That For Years We Have Been Writing The Numeral Five Backward. This Has Led To Reevaluation Of Counting As A Method Of Getting From One To Ten. Students Are Taught Advanced Concepts Of Boolean Algebra, And Formerly Unsolvable Equations Are Dealt With By Threats Of Reprisals.

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

Not Think Of Death As An End, But Think Of It More As A Very Effective Way Of Cutting Down On Your Expenses.

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

For Some Reason I'm More Appreciated In France Than I Am Back Home. The Subtitles Must Be Incredibly Good.

Because It's Much More Pleasant To Be Obsessed Over How The Hero Gets Out Of His Predicament Than It Is Over How I Get Out Of Mine.

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

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

I've Never Been An Intellectual But I Have This Look.

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

Marriage Is Like Mushrooms: We Notice Too Late If They Are Good Or Bad.

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.

Life Is Horrible, But It Is Not Relentlessly Black From Wire To Wire. You Can Sit Down And Hear A Mozart Symphony, Or You Can Watch The Marx Brothers, And This Will Give You A Pleasant Escape For A While. And That Is About The Best That You Can Do.

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...

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."

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.

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.

Talent Is Luck. The Important Thing In Life Is Courage.

Raised By Two Mothers...wow, Most Of Us Barely Survive One

People Always Tease Me. They Say, Look At You, You Went For So Much Psychoanalysis And You're So Neurotic, You Wind Up Marrying A Girl So Much Younger Than You.

Paris Is A Very Exciting City. I Learned About Paris The Same Way That Americans Do: From The Movies.

Do I Believe In God? I Did Until Mother's Accident. She Fell On Some Meat Loaf And It Penetrated Her Spleen.

I Think There Is Too Much Wrong With The World To Ever Get Too Relaxed And Happy. The More Natural State, And The Better One, I Think, Is One Of Some Anxiety And Tension Over Man's Plight In This Mysterious Universe.

Mysterious Universe

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.

How Can I Believe In God When Just Last Week I Got My Tongue Caught In The Roller Of An Electric Typewriter?

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

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

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

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

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

Inertia Accounts For Two-thirds Of Marriages. But Love Accounts For The Other Third.

I Myself Don't Like To Speak To The Actors At All. I Like To Hire Great People And Let Them Do Their Thing. I Don't Like To Speak To Them. I Don't Like To Have Lunch With Them. I Don't Like To Socialize With Them. I Don't Like To Hear Their Ideas.

You Can't Ride Two Horses With One Behind.

Trending Author

Bruce Beresford

Marcus Aurelius

Category