“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”
A scene from Annie Hall. Did you know that that is Diane Keaton’s real name?
The unplanned theme of the last few days has been birthdays. Here’s someone who just celebrated his 75th: Woody Allen. I have been a fan since I saw his early movie Take the Money and Run on TV at age 10. (Channel 9 used to air it, along with Dog Day Afternoon, The Oscar, Deliverance, and the Jerry Lewis oeuvre.) The first lines I ever quoted from Woody Allen were “I have a gub” and “My father had a small piece of land” (It’s a visual joke). Some other favorites:
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you’re getting this down.”
“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
“If only God would give me some sign! Like making a large deposit into a Swiss bank account.”
Read 75 quotes from Woody Allen.
My five favorite Woody Allen movies, a constantly shifting list:
Love and Death
Manhattan
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Sleeper
Annie Hall
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