Woody Allen Real Quotations

When you make the film, there's a big difference between when you're in your own home at the typewriter, and when you're standing on a mountain, or on a street corner, and buses are coming by-it's a different reality. You make a million changes that were never in the script, but that reality dictates.

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

Cynicism is reality with an alternate spelling.

I always feel, I guess being a product of the movies of the 40s where movies were the greatest things and screens were big and palaces were palaces and stars were larger than life that reality was so much inferior to what we felt was conceivably possible from what we had seen in the movies.

I have a hyper-active imagination, my mind tends to jump around a little, and I have some trouble between fantasy and reality.

To me there's no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They're all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.

In real life, Keaton believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.

Real life is generally much duller and inevitably sadder, most of the time. In film, you control everything that's going on, so you can indulge the most fantastic, romantic, escapist feelings and fantasies. You can do anything you want. That's why it's very seductive and pleasurable to earn your living making movies because you're not living in the real world.

You always think another time would have been ideal for you . . . the reality is there was no novocaine when you went to the dentist.

Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

I prefer the magic to reality, and have since I was 5 years old. Hopefully, I can continue to make films and constantly escape into them.

You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life

I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.

In the shower, with the hot water coming down, you've left the real world behind, and very frequently things open up for you. It's the change of venue, the unblocking the attempt to force the ideas that's crippling you when you're trying to write.

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.

Reality may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it's still the only place where you can get a decent steak.

Writing is great because you never have to meet the test of reality when you're writing. When I write the film is always a masterpiece at that point. I write and I make up things and budgets don't mean anything and it's great.

I do believe that reality is dreadful and that you are forced to choose it in the end or go crazy, but that it kills you.

I never think I feel cynical in general. Cynical is reality with an alternate spelling. I feel there's a gigantic amount of injustice and overt crime every day in the world, from emotional crimes to international crimes, and it often carries rewards.

I've never felt Truth was Beauty. Never. I've always felt that people can't take too much reality. I like being in Ingmar Bergman's world. Or in Louis Armstrong's world. Or in the world of the New York Knicks. Because it's not this world. You spend your whole life searching for a way out. You just get an overdose of reality, you know, and it's a terrible thing. I'm always fighting against reality.

There is always the possibility that people will change. Real change is more rare. You are who you are at a certain age in life you are pretty much a variation of that your whole life. It?s conceivable that you will change but it's not likely.

Fantasy is seductive and much more wonderful than reality, but you can't take it to the bank. It's always an escape. And if used as an escape, as in attending a movie or a show for a circumscribed period of time, it's fine. When it starts to become undifferentiated from reality, it leads to big trouble.

Fantasy is only a state of mind that you can employ when existing in a real context.

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.

I think it's my job or the artist's job, to try and find some solution or some reason to accept things. But given the grimmest reality, I feel the grimmest facts are the real facts, the true facts: that you're born, you die, you suffer, it's to no purpose, and you're gone forever, ever, ever, and that's it.

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

Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.

You can learn technological things, you can learn about specific things, but the real problems that people deal with in any subject, existential subjects or romantic subjects, you never learn anything. So you make a fool of yourself when you're 20, you make a fool of yourself at 40, at 60 at 80. The ancient Greeks were dealing with these problems. They screwed up all the time. People do now.

It's very hard to keep your spirits up. You've got to keep selling yourself a bill of goods, and some people are better at lying to themselves than others. If you face reality too much, it kills you.... you've got to find an answer to the question: Why go on?

In real life I'm not the character I play in my films. I'm reasonably competent, I work very hard, I'm disciplined, I lead a very middle class life. I work in the mornings, I have lunch, I practise my clarinet, I go to the movies, I eat out in restaurants or watch ball games on television or at the ball games.