Woody Allen

That's why I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works.

Why would you want to hear my story? Do we know each other? Do we like each other? Let me tell you right off, ok... I'm not a like-able guy. Charm has never been a priority with me. And just so you know, this is not the feel good movie of the year. So if you're one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage.

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! I tried to commit suicide myself. Obviously, it didn't work out. But why do you even want to hear about all this? Christ, you got your own problems. I'm sure your all obsessed with any number of sad little hopes and dreams. Your predictably unsatisfying love lives, your failed business ventures. "Oh, if only I'd bought that stock! If only I-if only I purchased THAT house years ago! If only I'd made a move on THAT woman." If this, if that. You know what? Gimmie a break with your could have's and should have's. Like my mother used to say, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley car." My mother didn't have wheels. She had varicose veins. Still, the woman gave birth to a brilliant mind. I was considered for a Nobel Prize in physics... I didn't get it. But, you know, its all politics. It's like every other phony honor. Incidentally, don't think I'm-I'm bitter because of some personal setback. By the standards of a mindless, barbaric civilization, I've been pretty lucky. I was married to a beautiful woman who had family money. For years we lived on Beekman Place. I taught at Columbia. String theory.

The human race. They've had to install automatic toilets in public restrooms, because people can't be entrusted to flush a toilet.

Love, despite what they tell you, does not conquer all, nor does it even usually last. In the end the romantic aspirations of our youth are reduced to, whatever works.

I happen to hate New Year's celebrations. Everybody desperate to have fun. Trying to celebrate in some pathetic little way. Celebrate what? A step closer to the grave? That's why I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works. And don't kid yourself. Because its by no means up to your own human ingenuity. A bigger part of your existence is luck, than you'd like to admit. Christ, you know the odds of your fathers one sperm from the billions, finding the single egg that made you. Don't think about it, you'll have a panic attack.

People are stupid, selfish, greedy, cowardly, short sighted worms.

Don't you know you have to sing happy birthday twice to get the germs off?

Look, you're a sweet kid. Stupid beyond all comprehension, but you'll never survive here. You got nothing going for you. Zero, zilch. Ya know, you may be beauty queen material in the deep south, but this is the big time. Here you're a three. A five maybe after you bathe.

I admit that I didn't give you you're full due at first - physically. However, as only a great mind can do, I've reassessed... my... position, and uh, changed my mind.

Have you lost your mind? Why on earth would you even fantasize about such a thing. What could I offer you but a bad temper, hypochondriasis, morbid fixations, reclusive rages, and and misanthropy. And what could you offer me? A character out of Faulkner, not unlike Benjy.

Yes, my life is circumscribed, but I manage to avoid stress. I've achieved a delicate balance, and as long as I can maintain it, I feel less inclined to ending it.

We were both students at the University of Chicago. She had a high I.Q. and a low-cut dress.

You know, you-your a man of learning, of cultivation, of aesthetic sensibility, this is what you take away from all that school prayer hokum and my country right or wrong? Her bosom?

Well, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting her to bed. She's vulnerable. She's stupid and she's been abandoned. Personally, I lose all erotic inclination when the woman's a member of the National Rifle Association.

Hey, the basic teachings of Jesus are quite wonderful, so by the way is the original intention of Karl Marx, okay. What could be bad? Everyone share equally, do onto others, democracy, government by the people - all great ideas, these are all great ideas. But they suffer from one fatal flaw, which is, that they are all based on the fallacious notion that people are fundamentally decent. Give them a chance to do right and they'll take it. They are not stupid, selfish, greedy, cowardly, short-sighted worms.

I'm a man with a huge world view… I'm surrounded by microbes.

That's Frieda, our maid. Personally I think she was Hitler's maid at Berchtesgaden.

And, of course, my stepbrother Scott, who's very smart, but currently on the outs with the family, because he's become a conservative Republican, which has caused my stepfather to have a stroke since we're all liberal Democrats.

And wouldn't you know it, as soon as his brain started functioning properly, Scott resigned from the Young Conservative Republican Club and started espousing left-wing, Democratic, liberal philosophy.

If Dad's a liberal Democrat, then you'd have to say Mom is the one thing more extreme. She's a guilty liberal Democrat.

I'm gonna kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I'll be dead. In fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or… wait a minute. With the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York, but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done and I could also be dead.

In a relationship, it is better to be the leaver than the leavee.

Carol was a poet and a member of MENSA so...

Yeah she was also a heroin addict, but I thought it was insulin, so how was I to know?

My knowledge of art is limited to Kirk Douglas as Vincent VanGogh.

Madeline was an archaeologist. She was fabulous.

Yeah, okay, she had a little problem with fidelity. You know, I didn't happen to see it.

Well, that's something we never gonna know. We've managed to produce a fabulous daughter though. She got your looks, fortunately, and my… magic personality.

You're going to major in Journalism or Law. Not Rowing.

There was a moment there when I stroked when I should have hickeyed.

I can't forgive you, only God can forgive you.

When the heart rules the head, disaster follows.

You're born, you commit no crime, and then you're sentenced to death.

All my optimism was an illusion.

I came to say that for some inexplicable reason that defies common sense and human understanding, that I have, of late, experienced some small... quite small but discernible, inner stirrings regarding your smile.

I have irrational positive feelings for Sophie Baker.

The comparison makes me laugh! Olivia is a person of accomplishment and charm. Sophie's a street finagler who makes her way living off one bit of hokum to the next.

Of course, she does come from dire circumstances. I mean, it's very easy to be judgmental about people who are born into circumstances less fortunate than one's own.

Well put. And people do sometimes make the wrong choices, which they regret, even though no serious harm was done.

I came to say, that for some inexplicable reason that defines common sense and human understanding, that I have of late experienced some small... quite small, but discernible, inner stirrings regarding your smile.

And possessing a soul which is large and capable of complexity, as all great minds are, I have decided to forgive you and take you under my wing.

It's a saying. Obviously, I don't have wings. I only mean that, incredible as it sounds, and this is no small gesture, given the time wasted and the public embarrassment you've caused me, that I'm willing to take you back.

Live dangerously, I say. You only live once. Or maybe two or three times, depending on your supply of ectoplasm.

Happiness is not the natural human condition.

We all hope someone will come along with superpowers, but the only superpower certain to show up wears a black robe.

As depressing as the facts of existence are, they are the facts. There is no metaphysical world. What you see out there is what you get. I think Mr. Nietzsche has disposed of the God matter rather convincingly.

y aunt, whom I love, is in mortal danger. And so, I ask you… I ask you… Wait a minute. This is the stupidest load of twaddle I have ever heard.

There is no 'real thing', Howard! It's all phony! From the séance table to the Vatican and beyond!

I don't understand. Is the conductor a blithering idiot? He went over the tempo six times. It's Adagio, Adagio, Adagio! It's not racehorse tempo.

I view your behavior as a great man views the malicious mischief of... what shall we say, pygmy?

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

So much of philosophy is just verbal masturbation.

I couldn't remember the reason for living, and when I did it wasn't convincing.

It's very scary when you run out of distractions.

Kant said human reason is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss but also cannot answer.

Fifty-fifty odds is better than most people get in life.

I set out to be an active world changer and wound up a passive intellectual who can't fuck.

I'm well aware of what Kierkegaard thought. But he was, in the end, a Christian. How comforting that would be.

I'm asking you to put our everyday assumptions aside, and trust your experience of life. In order to really see the world, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it.

Kant said human reason is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss, but also cannot answer. Okay, so, what are we talking about here? Morality? Choice? The randomness of life? Aesthetics? Murder?

Where to begin? You know, the existentialists feel nothing happens until you hit absolute rock bottom. Well, let's say that when I went to teach at Braylin College, emotionally, I was at Zabriskie Point. Of course, my reputation, or should I say a reputation, preceded me.

The dizziness and anxiety had disappeared and I was happy and enjoying the joy of living.

I'm Abe Lucas and I've murdered. I've had many experiences and now a unique one. I've taken a human life. Not in battle or self defense, but I made a choice I believed in and saw it through. I feel like an authentic human being.

Life's ironic isn't it? One day a person has a morass of complicated, unsolvable problems then in the batting of an eye, dark clouds part and she can enjoy a decent life again. It's just astounding.

Everything about killing Judge Spangler turned me on. The idea of helping this woman, of taking action, of ridding the world of the kind of vermin that makes the world an extra hell for all of us. I was intrigued by the creative challenge of bringing off a perfect murder. It was a high-stakes risk, but the risk made me feel alive.

Jill had been right in her appraisal of me. I was teetering on the brink of some kind of breakdown, unable to deal with my feelings of anger, frustration, futility. They say that drowning is a painless way to go.

My writing was flowing, the creative juices unblocked. I was happy and enjoying a sense of well being and had begun an affair with Jill, something I had been determined not to do and yet was carried along in the sudden momentum of the sheer joy of living. The thought that I had once been indifferent to existence seemed preposterous.