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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.

-Woody Allen

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Over The Years I've

Woody Allen

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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.

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Some Guy Hit My Fender, And I Told Him, 'be Fruitful And Multiply,' But Not In Those Words.

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

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.

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

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

I Idolized Superman When I Was Younger. I Thought He And I Had A Lot In Common. He Was Always Going Into Phonebooths And Taking Off All His Clothes.

I Sold My Memoirs Of My Love Life To Parker Brothers And They Are Going To Make A Game Out Of It.

But What If Everyone In The World Behaved Like Me And Came Here And Shot Brisseau Through The Ear? What A Mess! And Of Course We'd Need Valet Parking.

Of All The Wonders Of Nature, A Tree In Summer Is Perhaps The Most Remarkable; With The Possible Exception Of A Moose Singing 'embraceable You' In Spats.

My Ex-wife Was A Philosophy Major At Nyu. Yeah, She And I Used To Have Deep Philosophical Discussions Where She Would Prove That I Didn't Exist.

Eternity Is Really Long, Especially Near The End.

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

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

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

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

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

That's The Way I Feel About The World: There Are Certain Problems That Can Only Be Dealt With That Way - Going Out And Doing Them. As Ugly A Truth As That Is, I Do Think It's The Truth About The World.

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

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.

I Think A Relationship Is Like A Shark. It Has To Constantly Move Forward Or It Dies.

Life Is For The Living.

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

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

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

The Best An Idea Gets Is When Its In Your Head.

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

Basically I Am A Low-culture Person. I Prefer Watching Baseball With A Beer And Some Meatballs.

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.

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.

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

We Live In Far Too Permissive A Society. Never Before Has Pornography Been This Rampant. And Those Films Are So Badly Lit!

People Make Films For Different Reasons. For Money. Or, They Make Them Because Something In Them Demands Artistic Expression. I Do It Because I Enjoy The Work.

Marriage Is The Death Of Hope.

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.

Events Unfold So Unpredictably, So Unfairly, Human Happiness Does Not Seem To Be Included In The Design Of Creation. It Is Only We, With Our Capacity To Love That Give Meaning To The Indifferent Universe. And Yet, Most Human Beings Seem To Have The Ability To Keep Trying And Even Try To Find Joy From Simple Things, Like Their Family, Their Work, And From The Hope That Future Generations Might Understand More.

Capacity To Love

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

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

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

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.

With Me; It's Just A Genetic Dissatisfaction With Everything.

Dissatisfaction

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

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

I Work For A Company That Makes Deceptively Shallow Serving Dishes For Chinese Restaurants.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

My Wife Is Immature. Whenever I Take A Bath, She Sinks My Boats.

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...

For A While We Pondered Whether To Take A Vacation Or Get A Divorce. We Decided That A Trip To Bermuda Is Over In Two Weeks, But A Divorce Is Something You Always Have.

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

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.

Death Is An Acquired Trait.

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.

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

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

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.

What If The Worst Is True? What If There's No God, And You Only Go Around Once, And That's It? Don't You Want To Be A Part Of The Experience? You Know, What The Hell? It's Not All A Drag, And I'm Thinking To Myself: Geez! I Should Stop Ruining My Life Searching For Answers I'm Never Gonna Get And Just Enjoy It While It Lasts. And, You Know, After-who Knows? Maybe There Is Something, Nobody Really Knows. I Know That Maybe Is A Very Slim Reed To Hang Your Whole Life On, But That's The Best We Have.

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.

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.

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If Man Were Immortal, Do You Realize What His Meat Bills Would Be?

I've Become The Person I've Always Hated, But I'm Happier.

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

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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.

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

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

Not Only Is There No God, But Try Finding A Plumber On Sunday.

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

I've Always Had An Easy Time Directing Actors Because I Always Hire Ones That Are Great Before I Get My Hands On Them.

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.

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

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

Early In Life, I Was Visited By The Bluebird Of Anxiety

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.

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

When We Lose Twenty Pounds... We May Be Losing The Twenty Best Pounds We Have! We May Be Losing The Pounds That Contain Our Genius, Our Humanity, Our Love And Honesty.

It Seems To Me That Making Escapist Films Might Be A Better Service To People Than Making Intellectual Ones And Making Films That Deal With Issues. It Might Be Better To Just Make Escapist Comedies That Don't Touch On Any Issues. The People Just Get A Cool Lemonade, And Then They Go Out Refreshed, They Enjoy Themselves, They Forget How Awful Things Are And It Helps Them - It Strengthens Them To Get Through The Day.

It Is No Secret That Organized Crime In America Takes In Over Forty Billion Dollars A Year. This Is Quite A Profitable Sum, Especially When One Considers That The Mafia Spends Very Little For Office Supplies.

I'm Sure There Are People In Hollywood, Whose Main Drive In Film Is To Make Money, Who Will Feel That Any Use Of The Word Hijacking Or Any Reference To Anything Violent Or Remotely Associated With The Terrible Tragedy That Occurred Will Lose Customers For Them. And That Will Be The Only Criterion That Will Matter And So They'll Force The Minions That Work For Them To Remove These Things From Their Movies, Or Not Make Movies About That Subject.

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

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

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

Your Audience Teaches You How To Be Funny.

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

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.

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.

Change Is Almost Always Negative. Things Degenerate.

I Wouldn't Necessarily Want To Be A Big Muscular Guy. It's Nice To Be Gorgeous Whether You're Male Or Female Assuming You Don't Lose Whatever Else You Have.

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

I Prefer To Achieve Immortality By Not Dying.

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'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 I've Gotten Technically Better Over The Years But You'd Have To Be A Fool Not To. I've Made So Many Movies That By Sheer Quantity You Get Better At The Technique.

I'm A Teleological, Existential Agnostic.

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.

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.

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

Does Art Imitate Life, Or Does Life Imitate Tv?

Our Love, Our Love Will Last Forever. It's Forever But It Just Doesn't Work. That's Why It Will Always Be Romantic Because It Can Not Be Complete.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

I Can Levitate Birds. No One Cares.

Sentence Structure Is Innate, But Whining Is Acquired.

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

The Prison Psychiatrist Asked Me If I Thought Sex Was Dirty. I Told Him Only When It's Done Right.

Real Software Engineers Don't Debug Programs, They Verify Correctness. This Process Doesn't Necessarily Involve Execution Of Anything On A Computer, Except Perhaps A Correctness Verification Aid Package. Sex Without Love Is An Empty Experience, But, As Empty Experiences Go, It's One Of The Best.

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

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.

My Films Are Therapy For My Debilitating Depression. In Institutions People Weave Baskets. I Make Films.

This Stuff Tastes Awful; I Could Have Made A Fortune Selling It In My Health-food Store.

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.

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.

This Is My Perspective And Has Always Been My Perspective On Life: I Have A Very Grim, Pessimistic View Of It. I Always Have, Since I Was A Little Boy. It Hasn't Gotten Worse With Age Or Anything. I Do Feel That It's A Grim, Painful, Nightmarish, Meaningless Experience, And That The Only Way That You Can Be Happy Is If You Tell Yourself Some Lies And Deceive Yourself.

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

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

I've Never Been Satisfied Or Even Pleased With A Film That I've Done. I Make Them, I'm Finished, I've Never Looked At One After. I Don't Like Them Because There's A Big Gap Between What You Conceive In Your Mind When You're Writing And You Don't Have To Meet The Test Of Reality. You're Home, You Write And It's Funny And Beautiful And Romantic And Dramatic, And Then You Have To Show Up On A Cold Morning, And You Don't Have Enough Of This And This Goes Wrong And You Make The Wrong Choice On Something And You Screwed Up And You Can't Go Back.

Therefore, To Be Unhappy One Must Love, Or Love To Suffer, Or Suffer From Too Much Happiness. I Hope You're Getting This Down.

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.

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

I Wish My Parents Had Raised Me In Manhattan Because I Think It's The Greatest Thing You Can Do For A Kid Is To Raise Them In New York City. I Can See This With My Own Children.

Take The Money And Run.

By Now They Had Mastered My Own Language, But They Still Made Simple Mistakes, Like Using 'hermeneutics,' When They Meant 'heuristic'.

I'm Awash In Self-contempt!

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.

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

I've Been Lucky Because My Films Have Consistently Made A Profit, Almost All Of Them Have Made A Profit. Never A Huge Profit, But Nobody Gets Hurt. And Therefore I Get A Lot Of Freedom.

I'm Astounded By People Who Want To 'know' The Universe When It's Hard Enough To Find Your Way Around Chinatown.

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 Don't Want To Achieve Immortality Through My Work. I Want To Achieve It Through Not Dying.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If I Can Play A Scene In A Master Shot, I Always Prefer It. And The Actors Always Prefer It. It's Fun To Look At On The Screen, The Actors Get A Chance To Sink Their Teeth Into Something Substantial, And It's Economically Helpful.

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.

The Less I Speak To The Actors, The Better. And I Always Hire Great People, And I Don't Want To Impose My Pre-conceived Notions On Them. They Know How To Play It.

Tradition Is The Illusion Of Permanance.

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

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.

If You Don't Have Fun Doing The Film, Then The Results Of The Film Will Never Give You Any Fun.

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?

I Love Nature, I Just Don't Want To Get Any Of It On Me.

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.

If I Could Just Hope To Have A Major Talent, Then I Would Rather Have It In Music Than In Any Other Field.

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.

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

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

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

When You Travel Around The Country, You See What A Tough Town New York Is: Rude, Competitive, A Town Where Good, Logical Ideas Are Ignored In Favor Of Unworkable Ones. And Yet, All These Other Towns Are So Dead And Boring Compared To New York.

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

[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

There's No Way To Prove That There Is No God. You Just Have To Take It On Faith.

There Is No God

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.

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

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

The Curtain Rises On A Vast Primitive Wasteland, Not Unlike Certain Parts Of New Jersey.

I, Interestingly, Had Dated A Woman In The Eisenhower Administration Briefly, And It Was Ironic To Me 'cause I Was Trying To Do Toher What Eisenhower Has Been Doing To The Country For The Last Eight Years.

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.

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

The Only Thing Standing Between Me And Greatness Is Me.

I See The Glass Half Full...but Of Poison.

Men Would Make Love With Any Number Of Women ... Even Total Strangers, While Females Were Selective. They Were Catering To The Demands Of One Small Egg. While Males Had Millions Of Frantic Sperms Screaming: "let Us Out, Let Us Out!".

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

Factory Workers

No Matter What You Do There Will Be Critics.

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.

Your Self-esteem Is A Notch Below Kafka.

Fantasy Is Only A State Of Mind That You Can Employ When Existing In A Real Context.

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

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

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

Sometimes The Critics Will Like A Film, And The Public Doesn't Come. Sometimes The Critics Won't Like The Film, And The Public Will Come. It's Completely Spontaneous. It's A Hazard.

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

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

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

Human Existence Is A Brutal Experience To Me... It's A Brutal, Meaningless Experience - An Agonizing, Meaningless Experience With Some Oases, Delight, Some Charm And Peace, But These Are Just Small Oases. Overall, It Is A Brutal, Terrible Experience, And So It Salvation Is What Can You Do To Alleviate The Agony Of The Human Condition, The Human Predicament? That Is What Interests Me The Most.

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.

You Know What My Philosophy Of Life Is? That It’s Important To Have Some Laughs, But You Got To Suffer A Little Too, Because Otherwise You Miss The Whole Point To Life.

The Roe Is Reputed To Sleep For A Thousand Years And Then Suddenly Rise In Flames, Particularly If It Was Smoking When It Dozed Off.

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 Hope You're Getting This Down.

I Think It's My Job Or The Artist's Job, To Try And Find Some Solution Or Some Reason To Accept Things. But Given The Grimmest Reality, I Feel The Grimmest Facts Are The Real Facts, The True Facts: That You're Born, You Die, You Suffer, It's To No Purpose, And You're Gone Forever, Ever, Ever, And That's It.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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Samuel Rutherford

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