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

-Woody Allen

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There's No Way To

Woody Allen

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

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There Is No God

More From Woody Allen

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

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.

There Is No Justice, There Is No Rational Structure To It [life]. That Is Just The Way It Is, And Each Person Figures Out Some Way To Cope.

Interestingly, According To Modern Astronomers, Space Is Finite. This Is A Very Comforting Thought-particularly For People Who Can Never Remember Where They Have Left Things.

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

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

Curiosity, That's What Kills Us. Not Muggers Or All That Bullshit About The Ozone Layer. It's Our Own Hearts And Minds.

The Heart Wants What It Wants. There's No Logic To These Things. You Meet Someone And You Fall In Love And That's That.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Artist's Job Is Not To Succumb To Despair But To Find An Antidote For The Emptiness Of Existence.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I Read In Self-defense.

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.

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

I'm A Teleological, Existential Agnostic.

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

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

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.

My Grandfather Was A Very Insignificant Man, Actually. At His Funeral His Hearse Followed The Other Cars.

I'm Short Enough And Ugly Enough To Succeed On My Own.

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

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

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

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

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

What If Nothing Exists And We're All In Somebody's Dream?

While We're Waiting For A Cab I'll Give You Your Lesson For Today. Don't Listen To What Your Teachers Tell Ya, You Know. Don't Pay Attention. Just, Just See What They Look Like And That's How You'll Know What Life Is Really Gonna Be Like.

A Tree Never Hits An Automobile Except In Self Defense.

I Never Ever See A Film Of Mine After I Release It To The Public. I See It When I Shoot It In My Dailies And While I'm Editing It, Re-editing It And Reshooting It And All That. By The Time It's Finished I Never Want To See It Again.

Isn't All Mankind Ultimately Executed For A Crime It Never Committed?

Capital Punishment

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

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

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

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

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

There's Nothing Sexier Than A Lapsed Catholic.

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

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

I Believe People Ought To Mate For Life...like Pigeons Or Catholics.

What If Everything Is An Illusion And Nothing Exists? In That Case, I Definitely Overpaid For My Carpet.

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

I Don't Know Enough To Be Incompetent.

I Love Baseball. You Know, It Doesn’t Have To Mean Anything. It’s Just Very Beautiful To Watch.

Human Beings Are Divided Into Mind And Body. The Mind Embraces All The Nobler Aspirations, Like Poetry And Philosophy, But The Body Has All The Fun.

I Said This To My Daughter, If You Don't Practice The Guitar, When You Get Older You Wouldn't Be Able To Play It. It's That Simple. If You Want To Play The Guitar, You Put A Half Hour In Everyday, But You Have To Do It.

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

I Had An Iq Test. The Results Came Back Negative.

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.

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

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

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

My Films Are Misinterpreted All The Time. I Don't Mind That. Everybody's Films Are Misinterpreted. But There's No Malice Or Stupidity In The People That Misinterpret Them. You Know What You Do, But Someone Else Sees It, And They Want To Talk About It Or Write About It, And So They Misinterpret Them.

The History Of The World Is Like: He Kills Me, I Kill Him, Only With Different Cosmetics And Different Castings. So In 2001, Some Fanatics Killed Some Americans, And Now Some Americans Are Killing Some Iraqis. And In My Childhood, Some Nazis Killed Jews. And Now, Some Jewish People And Some Palestinians Are Killing Each Other.

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

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

There Are Three Things Jewish People Worship-god, Chinese Food And Wall-to-wall Carpeting.

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

I Have No Idea What I Am Doing But Incompetence Has Never Prevented Me From Plunging In With Enthusiasm.

I Was Raised In A Religious Home. It Was Unreasonable Enforced Religion That Turned Me Off It. It Was A Joyless, Unpleasant, Stupid, Barbaric Thing When I Was A Child And I've Never Gotten Over That Feeling. If You're Talking About Religion It's One Thing; I Don't Hold Jewish Religion With Any More Seriousness Than I Would Any Other.

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.

What Was The Scandal? I Fell In Love With This Girl, Married Her. We Have Been Married For Almost 15 Years Now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fictional Character

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.

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

Cynicism Is Reality With An Alternate Spelling.

Every Time You Make A Movie It's A New And Different Experience. You Learn Very Little From The Past. So, I'm A Little Bit Better Than I Was When I First Started.

Different Experiences

I've Often Felt That Life Is A Hard Deal And It's Unrelentingly Tragic And An Uphill Fight.

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

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

Honey, You're The One Who Stopped Sleeping With Me, Ok? It'll Be A Year Come April 20th. I Remember The Date Exactly, Because It Was Hitler's Birthday

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

Meanwhile, The Minute You Put On The Dotted Line Your Sam Hancock - And Before A Notary - You'll Not Only Get The Negative But Elsie Makes A Wonderful Stuffed Cabbage Which We'll Include Gratis A Few Portions But Return The Jars Please.

Everything Is Controlled By A Small Evil Group To Which, Unfortunately, No One We Know Belongs.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Is World Peace Possible Or Is The Human Race Too Innately Aggressive? For Instance: Have You Ever Seen Women At A Sample Sale?

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

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.

I've Always Liked, Someday The Lamb Will Lay By The Lion.... But It Won't Get Much Sleep.

All Things Are Possible, Except Skiing Through A Revolving Door.

I Never Thought I Was Doing Anyone A Favour By Bringing Children Into The World. With People As Cruel To Each Other As They Are, It's A Terrible Proposition. The Best Of Lives Are Sad And Tragic. The Best Of Them. My General Conclusion Is That It's Not A Nice Thing To Do. The World Doesn't Need It. The Kid Doesn't Need It.

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.

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

Factory Workers

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.

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.

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

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.

I Can't Enjoy Anything Unless Everybody Is. If One Guy Is Starving Someplace, That Puts A Crimp In My Evening.

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.

Why Does Man Kill? He Kills For Food. And Not Only Food: Frequently There Must Be A Beverage.

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.

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

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

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.

Your Audience Teaches You How To Be Funny.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Great Roe Is A Mythological Beast With The Head Of A Lion And The Body Of A Lion, Though Not The Same Lion.

I Can't Do Anything To Death, Doctor's Orders.

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

You Look Up After Many Years And You Find That A Film Has Become A Classic Because It's Meaningful To People And Alive, Decade After Decade.

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

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

I Love The Rain - It Washes Memories Off The Sidewalk Of Life.

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

I Always Felt That The Problems Of The World Would Never Ever Be Solved Until People Came To Terms With The Deeper Issues [spiritual] - That There Would Be An Aimless Reshuffling Of World Leaders And Governments And Programs.

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.

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.

I Wish I Could Think Of A Positive Point To Leave You With. Will You Take Two Negative Points?

All I Have In My Life Is My Imagination

The Chief Problem About Death, Incidentally, Is The Fear That There May Be No Afterlife - A Depressing Thought, Particularly For Those Who Bothered To Shave. Also, There Is The Fear That There Is An Afterlife But No One Will Know Where It's Being Held. On The Plus Side, Death Is One Of The Few Things That Can Be Done As Easily Laying Down.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Twenty-one Years Ago, When I First Heard Mia Farrow Had Accused Me Of Child Molestation, I Found The Idea So Ludicrous I Didn't Give It A Second Thought. We Were Involved In A Terribly Acrimonious Breakup, With Great Enmity Between Us And A Custody Battle Slowly Gathering Energy. The Self-serving Transparency Of Her Malevolence Seemed So Obvious I Didn't Even Hire A Lawyer To Defend Myself. It Was My Show Business Attorney Who Told Me She Was Bringing The Accusation To The Police And I Would Need A Criminal Lawyer.

God Is Either Cruel Or Incompetent.

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 Heard That Commentary And Dissent Had Merged And Formed Dysenery.

It Is Clear The Future Holds Great Opportunities. It Also Holds Pitfalls. The Trick Will Be To Avoid The Pitfalls, Seize The Opportunities, And Get Back Home By Six O'clock.

I Tended To Place My Wife Under A Pedestal.

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.

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.

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

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

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

[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

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

The Artist Can't Give You An Answer That's Satisfying To The Dreadful Reality Of Your Existence. So The Best You Can Do Is Maybe Entertain People And Refresh Them For An Hour-and-a-half.

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.

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.

I Foresee Death By Culture Shock.

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 Wouldn't Mind Dying So Much If It Wasn't That I Would Be Dead At The End Of It.

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.

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.

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

I Am Not Afraid Of Death. I Just Don't Want To Be There When It Happens.

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.

I Have Bad Reflexes. I Was Once Run Over By A Car Being Pushed By Two Guys.

Death Is An Acquired Trait.

Should I Marry W? Not If She Won't Tell Me The Other Letters In Her Name. And What About Her Career? How Can I Ask A Woman Of Her Beauty To Give Up The Roller Derby? Decisions...

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.

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 Don't Want To Achieve Immortality Through My Work; I Want To Achieve Immortality Through Not Dying. I Don't Want To Live On In The Hearts Of My Countrymen; I Want To Live On In My Apartment.

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

Taste My Tuna Casserole - Tell Me If I Put In Too Much Hot Fudge.

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.

What Is So Fascinating About Sitting Around Watching A Bunch Of Pituitary Cases Stuff A Ball Through A Hoop?

Why Ruin A Good Story With The Truth?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Don't Think Of Death As An Ending. Think Of It As A Really Effective Way Of Cutting Down Your Expenses.

Me And Nature Are Two.

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

I Don't Believe In Competition For Artistic Things. I Just Like The Atmosphere Of The Cannes Festival. I Don't Want To Win Anything Or Lose Anything.

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

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.

Eighty Percent Of Success Is Showing Up.

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.

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

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

Showing Up Is 80 Percent Of Life.

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