Woody Allen Quotes

196 Sourced Quotes

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.

Woody Allen
Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.

Woody Allen
Child molestation is a touchy subject... Read the papers! Half the country's doing it!

Woody Allen
There's a speech I had to cut out of [the 1979 film] Manhattan and plan to get into the next film, where my character says that the metaphor for life is a concentration camp. I do believe that.

Woody Allen
I can't get with any religion that advertises in Popular Mechanics.

Woody Allen
Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around a Swedish airline stewardess and some handcuffs.

Woody Allen
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

Woody Allen
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.

Woody Allen
Cookie: What are you sad about?
Harry: I'm spiritually bankrupt. I'm empty.
Cookie: What do you mean?
Harry: I'm frightened. I got no soul, you know what I mean? Let me put it this way: when I was younger it was less scary waiting for Lefty than it is waiting for Godot.
Cookie: You lost me!
Harry: You know that the universe is coming apart? You know about that? You know what a black hole is?
Cookie: Yeah. That's how I make my living.

Woody Allen
Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.

Woody Allen
Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment.

Woody Allen
Eternal nothingness is O. K. if you're dressed for it.

Woody Allen
In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went.

Woody Allen
Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful – provided you get between the right man and the right woman.

Woody Allen
As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 [...] it's too small, history overwhelms it. 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. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.

Woody Allen
There is no question that one day gravity will suddenly cease and I will come loose and float up but I see myself floating up out of my trousers so not only am I adrift but hovering in my shorts.

Woody Allen
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

Woody Allen
When it comes to sex there are certain things that should always be left unknown, and with my luck, they probably will be.

Woody Allen
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.

Woody Allen
We live in far too permissive a society. Never before has pornography been this rampant. And those films are so badly lit!

Woody Allen
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.

Woody Allen
Is it better to be the lover or the loved one? Neither, if your cholesterol is over six hundred. By love, of course, I refer to romantic love -- the love between man and woman, rather than between mother and child, or a boy and his dog, or two headwaiters.

Woody Allen
I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is will they be able to break a twenty?

Woody Allen
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.

Woody Allen
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.

Woody Allen
Money is not everything, but it is better than having one's health.

Woody Allen
The sun, which is made of gas, can explode at any moment, sending our entire planetary system hurtling to destruction; students are advised what the average citizen can do in such a case.

Woody Allen
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.

Woody Allen
At the trial Stubbs chose to act as his own lawyer, but a conflict over his fee led to ill feelings.

Woody Allen
If God is everywhere, I had concluded, then He is in food. Therefore, the more I ate the godlier I would become. Impelled by this new religious fervor, I glutted myself like a fanatic.

Woody Allen