Quotes

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

I'm not afraid of dying . . . I just don't want to be there when it happens.

[in 1977] This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

[asked if he liked the idea of living on on the silver screen] I'd rather live on in my apartment.

[on films] I can't imagine that the business should be run any other way than that the director has complete control of his films. My situation may be unique, but that doesn't speak well for the business--it shouldn't be unique, because the director is the one who has the vision and he's the one who should put that vision onto film.

Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don't care about the films. I don't care if they're flushed down the toilet after I die.

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

[at the Academy Awards in 2002, explaining why he was the one introducing a montage of New York movies] And I said, "You know, God, you can do much better than me. You know, you might want to get Martin Scorsese, or, or Mike Nichols, or Spike Lee, or Sidney Lumet . . . " I kept naming names, you know, and um, I said, "Look, I've given you 15 names of guys who are more talented than I am, and, and smarter and classier" . . . "And they said, "Yes, but they weren't available."

If my film makes one more person miserable, I'll feel I've done my job.

For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good.

My relationship with Hollywood isn't love-hate, it's love-contempt. I've never had to suffer any of the indignities that one associates with the studio system. I've always been independent in New York by sheer good luck. But I have an affection for Hollywood because I've had so much pleasure from films that have come out of there. Not a whole lot of them, but a certain amount of them have been very meaningful to me.

The two biggest myths about me are that I'm an intellectual, because I wear these glasses, and that I'm an artist because my films lose money. Those two myths have been prevalent for many years.

Join the army, see the world, meet interesting people--and kill them.

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

[on why he never watches his own movies] I think I would hate them.

[about the audience] I never write down to them. I always assume that they're all as smart as I am . . . if not smarter.

[on the Academy Awards circa 1978] I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things--or who doesn't win them--you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is.

[on being nominated for an Oscar for Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)] You have to be sure to keep it very much in perspective. You think it's nice at the time because it means more money for your film, but as soon as you let yourself start thinking that way, something happens to the quality of the work.

There was no ripple professionally for me at all when I was in the papers with my custody stuff. I made my films, I worked in the streets of New York, I played jazz every Monday night, I put a play on. Everything professionally went just the same. There were no repercussions. There was white-hot interest for a while, like with all things like that, and then it became uninteresting to people.

The directors that have personal, emotional feelings for me are Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, and I'm sure there has been some influence but never a direct one. I never set out to try and do anything like them. But, you know, when you listen to a jazz musician like Charlie Parker for years and you love it, then you start to play an instrument, you automatically play like that at first, then you branch off with your own things. The influence is there, it's in your blood.

Hollywood for the most part aimed at the lowest common denominator. It's conceived in venality, it's motivated by pandering to the public, by making a lot of money. People like Ingmar Bergman thought about life, and they had feelings, and they wanted to dramatize them and engage one in a dialogue. I felt I couldn't easily be engaged by the nonsense that came out of Hollywood.

I had a line in one of my movies--"Everyone knows the same truth". Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it. One person will distort it with a kind of wishful thinking like religion, someone else will distort it by thinking political solutions are going to do something, someone else will think a life of sensuality is going to do it, someone else will think art transcends. Art for me has always been the Catholicism of the intellectuals. There is no afterlife for the Catholics really, and there's no afterlife for the arts. "Your painting lived on after you"--well, that doesn't really do it. That's not what you want. Even if your painting does have some longevity, eventually that's going to go. There won't be any works of William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven, or any theatre to see them in, or air or light. I've always felt you've got to live your life within the context of this worst-case scenario. Which is true; the worst-case scenario is here.

When I was a kid, movies from Hollywood seemed very glamorous, but when you look back at them as a young man, you can see out of the thousands of films that came out of Hollywood there were really very few good ones statistically, and those few that were good were made in spite of the studios. I saw European films as a young man and they were very much better. There's no comparison.

I was just a poor student. I had no interest in it. When I make a film the tacit contract with the audience is that I will give them some entertainment and not bore them. I have to do that. I just lay a message on them. Great filmmakers, like Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa or Federico Fellini, they're very entertaining, their films are fun. Well, in college they never made it entertaining for me, they just bored me stiff.

The biggest flaw in being self-taught is there are gaps. You self-teach yourself something and you think you know something fairly well, but then there are gaps a university teacher would have taught you as part of a mandatory program. I would probably have been better off if I'd got a better general education, but I was just so bored.

I can bring stars, I've worked with terrific cameramen, but people still have a better chance of making their [$150-million] films because they're not interested in the kind of profits I can bring if I'm profitable.

The sensibility of the filmmaker infuses the project so people see a picture like Annie Hall (1977) and everyone thinks it's so autobiographical. But I was not from Coney Island, I was not born under a Ferris wheel, my father never worked at a place that had bumper cars, that's not how I met Diane Keaton, and that's not how we broke up. Of course, there's that character who's always beleaguered and harassed. Certain things are autobiographical, certain feelings, even occasionally an incident, but overwhelmingly they're totally made up, completely fabricated.

Of course, I would love everybody to see my films. But I don't care enough ever to do anything about it. I would never change a word or make a movie that I thought they would like. I really don't care if they come or not. If they don't want to come, then they don't; if they do come, then great. Do I want to do what I do uncompromisingly, and would I love it if a big audience came? Yes, that would be very nice. I've never done anything to attract an audience, though I always get accused of it over the years.

[on the Academy Awards circa 1978] They're political and bought and negotiated for--although many worthy people have deservedly won--and 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.

I took a speed reading course and read "War and Peace" in 20 minutes. It involves Russia

I know it sounds horrible, but winning that Oscar for Annie Hall (1977) didn't mean anything to me.

When I was in my early 20s, I knew a man--who has since died--who was older than me and also very crazy. He'd been in a straitjacket and institutionalized, and I found him very brilliant. When I would speak to him about writing, about life, art, women, he was very, very cogent--but he couldn't lead his own life, he just couldn't manage.

[on shooting in London, 2004] In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now. There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it's taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we'd get a Federico Fellini or an Ingmar Bergman or a Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films - if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100-million pictures that make $500 million. That's why I'm happy to work in London, because I'm right back in the same kind of liberal creative attitude that I'm used to.

With my complexion I don't tan, I stroke.

I always think it is a mistake to try and be young, because I feel the young people in the United States have not distinguished themselves. The young audience in the United States have not proven to me that they like good movies or good theatre. The films that are made for young people are not wonderful films, they are not thoughtful. They are these blockbusters with special effects. The comedies are dumb, full of toilet jokes, not sophisticated at all. And these are the things the young people embrace. I do not idolize the young.

Man was made in God's image. Do you really think God has red hair and glasses?

Most of life is tragic. You're born, you don't know why. You're here, you don't know why. You go, you die. Your family dies. Your friends die. People suffer. People live in constant terror. The world is full of poverty and corruption and war and Nazis and tsunamis. The net result, the final count is, you lose--you don't beat the house.

Life is for the living.

My brain: It's my second favorite organ.

I don't believe in an afterlife, although I'm bringing along a change of underwear.

Organized crime in America takes in over $40 billion a year and spends very little on office supplies.