Woody Allen

“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.”

“[...] I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day.”

“Faire son chemin dans la vie n'est pas simple et tout ce qui peut marcher sans nuire à autrui est une bonne chose”

“Drama is like meat and three veg. Whereas comedy is like the merangue at the end.”

“These 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, and that included a choice of any two vegetables. Thirty dollars an hour! Fifty dollars an hour! The Kaiser only got twelve and a quarter for being Kaiser! And he had to walk to work! And the length of treatment! Two years! Five years! If one of us couldn’t cure a patient in six months we would refund his money, take him to any musical revue and he would receive either a mahogany fruit bowl or a set of stainless steel carving knives. I remember you could always tell the patients Jung failed with, as he would give them large stuffed pandas.”

“It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”

“I can't do anything to death, doctor's orders.”

“Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.”

“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”

“I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”

“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.”

“He hecho un curso de lectura veloz y he leído Guerra y paz en veinte minutos. Habla de Rusia.”

“Standing in a garage no more makes you a car than standing in a church makes you a Christian.”

“My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.”

“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.”

“In my house I'm the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.”

“We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices...”

“I failed to make the chess team because of my height.”

“Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do … I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we’re gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.”

“Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.”

“Just don't take any class where you have to read BEOWULF.”

“Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle.Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch’ s one-woman show.Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What’s in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again.”

“End production today. Wrap party as usual a little sad. Slow danced with Scarlett. Broke her toe. Not my fault. When she dipped me back, I stepped on it.Penélope and Javier anxious to work with me again. Said if I ever come up with another screenplay to try and find them.Goodbye drink with Rebecca. Sentimental moment.Everyone in cast and crew chipped in and bought me a ballpoint pen.”

“Mrs. Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth! That's right! I can't work to order like a common tradesman! I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing, with wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset because it won't fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid. I want to smash her! I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Still, I find it beautiful.”

“Hay relaciones en las que las palabras dice amistad, pero los ojos gritan romance.”

“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 love nature, I just don't want to get any of it on me.”

“Eres un pesimista, ves siempre el vaso medio vacio! -No, lo veo medio lleno pero de veneno.”

“Tant que l'homme sera mortel, il ne sera jamais décontracté.”

“I've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.”

“Death doesn't really worry me that much, I'm not frightened about it... I just don't want to be there when it happens.”

“My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.”

“I have no idea what I am doing but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.”

“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”

“Raised by two mothers...wow, most of us barely survive one”

“This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?”

“Life is short. Short, and not about anything except what you can touch and what touches you.”

“By now they had mastered my own language, but they still made simple mistakes, like using 'hermeneutics,' when they meant 'heuristic'.”

“When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.”

“Yo no quiero alcanzar la inmortalidad por mi obra. Quiero conseguirla por no morir. No quiero vivir en la memoria de mis compatriotas. Preferiría vivir en mi apartamento.”

“Don't think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses.”

“What the hell does it all mean anyhow? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing comes to anything. And yet, there's no shortage of idiots to babble. Not me. I have a vision. I'm discussing you. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your newspapers. The TV. Everybody's happy to talk. Full of misinformation. Morality, science, religion, politics, sports, love, your portfolio, your children, health. Christ, if I have to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to live, I don't wanna live. I hate goddamn fruits and vegetables. And your omega 3's, and the treadmill, and the cardiogram, and the mammogram, and the pelvic sonogram, and oh my god the-the-the colonoscopy, and with it all the day still comes where they put you in a box, and its on to the next generation of idiots, who'll also tell you all about life and define for you what's appropriate. My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him. And could you blame him? With the horror, and corruption, and ignorance, and poverty, and genocide, and AIDS, and global warming, and terrorism, and-and the family value morons, and the gun morons. "The horror," Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness, "the horror." Lucky Kurtz didn't have the Times delivered in the jungle. Ugh... then he'd see some horror. But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go "Oh my God, the horror," and then you turn the page and finish your eggs from the free range chickens. Because what can you do. It's overwhelming!”

“The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.”

“If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.”

“I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.”

“And my parents finally realize I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.”

“It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong, which was music I grew up with, and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don't know, I guess it was a combination of everything, the sound of the music, and the breeze, and how beautiful Dorrie looked to me and for one brief moment everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way.”