#10: quotes from woody

I have been watching a lot of Woody Allen over the last two months. I know all about the Farrow allegations. So don't cancel me — for now, let's just separate art from the artist for now. And he is an existentialist. I am just pasting some great quotes from his movies that spoke to me. Just for documenting. No context, just dialogues as it is:

• "You know what my philosophy of life is? That it's important to have some laughs, no question about it, but you gotta suffer a little too' because, otherwise you miss the whole point to life. And that's how I feel." (Brodway Danny Rose)

• "My uncle Sidney — lovely uncle, dead, completely — used to say three things. He used to say: Acceptance, forgiveness and love. And that is a philosophy of life: Acceptance, forgiveness and love." (Brodway Danny Rose)

• "Guilt is important. It's important to feel guilty, otherwise, you know, you're capable of terrible things. You know, it's very important to be guilty. I'm guilty all the time and I never did anything, you know." (Brodway Danny Rose)

• "What if there is no God and you only go around once and that's it. Well, ya know, don't you wanna be part of the experience? You know, what the hell it's not all a drag. And I'm thinking to myself, Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And after who knows, I mean maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have. And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself." (Hannah and Her Sisters)

• " Millions of books written on every conceivable subject, by all these great minds; and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. Jesus, I read Socrates. You know, this guy used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell's he got to teach me? And - and Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we live, we're gonna live over and over, the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. Jes I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened!" (Hannah and Her Sisters)

• "For all my education, accomplishments, and so-called wisdom, I can't fathom my own heart." (Hannah and Her Sisters)

• "We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more." (Crimes and Misdemeanors)

• "My heart says one thing, my head says something else. It's very hard to get your heart and head together in life. Let me teach you that, you know. In my case, they're not even friendly." (Crimes and Misdemeanors)

• "Its a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless. And I couldn't go on living if I didn't feel it, with all my heart, a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness. And some kind of higher power; otherwise, their's no basis to know how to live." (Crimes and Misdemeanors)

• "We must always remember, that we, when we are born, we need a great deal of love, in order to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love, it usually last. But, the universe is a pretty cold place. It's we who invested with our feelings and, under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn't worth it any more." (Crimes and Misdemeanors)

• "This is reality. In reality we rationalize, we deny or we couldn't go on living." (Crimes and Misdemeanors)

• "Look, I don't wanna talk any more about what's real and what's illusion. Life's too short to spend time thinking about life. Let's just live it! " (The Purple Rose of Cairo)

• "Do you share my sense of wonderment at the very fabric of being? The smell of a rose? Real food? Sensuous music?" (The Purple Rose of Cairo)

• "It's so impulsive, but... I'll come. Why not? What's life without a little risk taking? Who knows?" (The Purple Rose of Cairo)

• "I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable." (Annie Hall)

• "After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs." (Annie Hall)

• "There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly." (Annie Hall)

• "Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face..." (Manhattan)

• "Not everybody gets corrupted. You can have a little faith in people." (Manhattan)

• "He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy, and nihilistic moods of despair. He had complaints about life but never any solutions. He longed to be an artist but balked at the necessary sacrifices. In his most private moments, he spoke of his fear of death, which he elevated to tragic heights when in fact it was mere narcissism." (Manhattan)

• "I couldn't remember the reason for living, and when I did it wasn't convincing." (Irrational Man)

• "The dizziness and anxiety had disappeared and I was happy and enjoying the joy of living." (Irrational Man)

• "It's very scary when you run out of distractions." (Irrational Man)

• "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?" (Irrational Man)

• "I think Abe was crazy from the beginning. Was it from stress? Was it anger? Was he disgusted by what he saw as life's never-ending suffering? Or was he simply bored by the meaninglessness of day-to-day existence? " (Irrational Man)

• "Fifty-fifty odds is better than most people get in life." (Irrational Man)

• "I set out to be an active world changer and wound up a passive intellectual who can't fuck." (Irrational Man)

• "You know, Abe actually says that people just manufacture drama so they can get through their lives because they're so empty." (Irrational Man)

• "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." (Irrational Man)

• "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." (Irrational Man)

• "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." (Irrational Man)

• "The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose." (Match Point)

• "Sophocles said, 'To never have been born may be the greatest boon of all.'" (Match Point)

• "You can learn to push the guilt under the rug and - go on. You have to. Otherwise it overwhelms you." (Match Point)

• "It would be fitting if I were apprehended... and punished. At least there would be some small sign of justice - some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning." (Match Point)

• "Oh, hard work is mandatory, but, I think everybody's afraid to admit what a big part luck plays. I mean, it seems scientists are - confirming more and more that all existence is here by blind chance. No purpose, no design." (Match Point)

• "Change is what life is made of! Change - if you don't change, you don't grow, you just shrivel up!" (Husbands and Wives)

• "What happened after the honeymoon? Did desire grow or did familiarity make partners want other lovers? Was the notion of ever-deepening romance a myth along with simultaneous orgasm? The only time Rifkin and his wife experienced one was when they were granted their divorce. Maybe in the end, the idea was not to expect too much out of life." (Husbands and Wives)