Woody Allen

Hey listen — I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.

I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.

Harry: The most beautiful words in the English language aren't "I love you" but "it's benign."

A fast word about oral contraception. I was involved in an extremely good example of oral contraception two weeks ago. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said "no."

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

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 not saying I didn't enjoy myself, but I didn't.

Love is the answer. But while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.

How could I not have known that there are little things the size of "Planck length" in the universe, which are a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter? Imagine if you dropped one in a dark theater how hard it would be to find.

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

Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.

“I WANTED nothing more than to be a foreign filmmaker, but of course I was from Brooklyn, which was not a foreign country. Through a happy accident I wound up being a foreign filmmaker because I couldn’t raise money any other way.”

Some guy hit my car fender the other day, and I said unto him, "Be fruitful and multiply." But not in those words.

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

Taste my tuna casserole — tell me if I put in too much hot fudge.

"You know, the whole American culture is going down the drain, you can't turn on a television set and see anything, or walk in the street and not find garbage, or neighborhoods that were formerly beautiful now have McDonald's in them, and it's all a part of an enormous degeneration of culture in the United States. People that exist in that culture are forced to make moral decisions all the time about their lives, their occupations, their love-lives, and they make decisions that are commensurate with what's happening to them in this culture, and it's too bad that that's happening because that's what Manhattan is about, that New York used to be such a great city, so wonderful, and it has to fight every day for its survival against the encroachment of all this terrible ugliness that is gradually overcoming all the big cities in America.
This ugliness comes from a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life. They don't know what they're doing, or why they're here. They have no religious center, they have no philosophical center, and so they act, they do what's expedient at the moment. They have no long view of society. They only have the view of quick money, and kill the pain of the moment, and so instead of dealing with the real problems that exist, that are complicated, they sweep them under the rug by turning on the television set, or taking cocaine, or doing many things that enable them to escape confrontation with the unpleasant realities of the world."

I have learned one thing. As Woody says, "Showing up is 80 percent of life." Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both.

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 unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down.

Bidnick gorges himself on Viagra, but the dosage makes him hallucinate and causes him to imagine he is Pliny the Elder.

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