Top 500 Woody Allen Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.”

— Woody Allen

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

— Woody Allen

253. “My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.”

— Woody Allen

254. “I feel about New York as a child whose father is a bank robber. Not perfect, but I still love him.”

— Woody Allen

255. “How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?”

— Woody Allen

256. “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.”

— Woody Allen

257. “Last year I had difficulty with my income tax. I tried to take my analyst off as a business deduction. The Government said it was entertainment. We compromised finally and made it a religious contribution.”

— Woody Allen

258. “Death should not be seen as the end but as a very effective way to cut down expenses.”

— Woody Allen

259. “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.”

— Woody Allen

260. “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.”

— Woody Allen

261. “In order to be successful, all you’ve got to do is show up 80 percent of the time.”

— Woody Allen

262. “Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.”

— Woody Allen

263. “When you write the script, you’re home in a room by yourself, and you’re writing, and there’s no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices.”

— Woody Allen

264. “Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.”

— Woody Allen

265. “I have a great admiration for English actors and actresses and have used them at every opportunity over the years, but now I won’t have to import them to New York.”

— Woody Allen

266. “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.”

— Woody Allen

267. “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.”

— Woody Allen

268. “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.”

— Woody Allen

269. “I can’t imagine any director directing a screenplay of mine, because the great directors all have very personal styles, and the ones that don’t are not very interesting directors.”

— Woody Allen

270. “Umlaut snaps around and we cut to a blond apparition in her early twenties, clearly descended from Olympus by way of Hugh Hefner’s mansion.”

— Woody Allen

271. “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.”

— Woody Allen

272. “One of the wonderful things about making a film of any genre is that you have dialogue. You can take up a position. If you want to say something about your position, you can just say it. You don’t have to spend massive amounts of screen time.”

— Woody Allen

273. “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.”

— Woody Allen

274. “When I’m not working, I think and I think when I get depressed.”

— Woody Allen

275. “Does art imitate life, or does life imitate TV?”

— Woody Allen

276. “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

277. “Dying is like making love, except you don’t get naseous afterwards.”

— Woody Allen

278. “There have been times when I’ve thought about it – but with my luck it would probably turn out to be only a temporary solution.”

— Woody Allen

279. “Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.”

— Woody Allen

280. “As the author you know how you want it to appear on screen and it’s always the content dictating the form.”

— Woody Allen

281. “I do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without being brainwashed into it or suckered into it by all the organized hustles.”

— Woody Allen

282. “That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives.”

— Woody Allen

283. “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

284. “A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.”

— Woody Allen

285. “I’ve inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father’s hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother’s surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.”

— Woody Allen

286. “I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.”

— Woody Allen

287. “I carry a bullet in my breast pocket. Once, a crazy evangelist threw a bible at me, which would have gone through my heart if it wasn’t for the bullet.”

— Woody Allen

288. “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can-opener works.”

— Woody Allen

289. “A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense.”

— Woody Allen

290. “He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.”

— Woody Allen

291. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I’m 237 years old, I should be collecting social security.”

— Woody Allen

292. “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.”

— Woody Allen

293. “I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion with you.”

— Woody Allen

294. “In the event of war, I’m a hostage.”

— Woody Allen

295. “Sex is better than talk. Ask anybody in this bar. Talk is what you suffer through so you can get to sex.”

— Woody Allen

296. “There are two important things in the world, the first is sex. The other isn’t all that important.”

— Woody Allen

297. “Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I would rather live on in my apartment.”

— Woody Allen

298. “The whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don’t.”

— Woody Allen

299. “You’re so good looking I can barely keep my eyes on the meter.”

— Woody Allen

300. “I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night.”

— Woody Allen