Woody Allen Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.

  Woody Allen

  Dance, Writing, World

  "Woody Allen, The Art of Humor No. 1". Interview with Michiko Kakutani, www.theparisreview.org. 1995.

• What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Thinking, Laughing

  "Woody Allen: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. August 8, 2013.

• 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.

  Woody Allen

  Real, Writing, Ideas

  "Woody Allen: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. August 8, 2013.

• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

  Woody Allen

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  "Shakespeare, Woody Allen And A Certain Qantas A380" by Christine Negroni, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 23, 2012.

• Sentence structure is innate, but whining is acquired.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Editing, Whining

• [Stanley] Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Artist, Perfect

• I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.

  Woody Allen

  Regret, Writing, School

  Woody Allen, Robert E. Kapsis, Kathie Coblentz (2006). “Woody Allen: Interviews”, p.26, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.

  Woody Allen

  Couple, Writing, Mind

• I always write the same way. I always write with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen on my bed. And then I go and type it up afterwards. I've always done that. Those things become habitual.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Yellow, Bed

• I'll work by myself for years and then I'll think it'll be fun to et one of my friends like Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath into a room and not be alone for the writing of the thing; to have the pleasure of taking walks and get lunch together; its sort of a fun process and then I do it and then I get back on my own for a while until I feel the need to do it again.

  Woody Allen

  Fun, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.woodyallen.art.pl

• Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.

  Woody Allen

  Education, Writing, Science

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

• I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects. It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given fingerpaints.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Mind, Way

• My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, People, Stupidity

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. August 13, 2008.

• When I started out, I was a television writer, and we wrote a television show that was on live every week. And you didn't have the luxury of coming in and waiting to be inspired. You came in and you had to write. And you wrote, because it was going to be live on the air. So I can do that.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Air, Luxury

• I write the script; nobody sees it, not the people that put the money in the picture. I cast who I want, and make the film. That's why I've always felt the only thing standing between me and greatness, is me. There's no excuse for me not to be great except that I'm not.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Greatness, People

  "Woody Allen On ‘Irrational Man’, His Movies & Hollywood’s Perilous Path – Cannes Q&A" by Mike Fleming Jr, deadline.com. May 14, 2015.

• That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

  Woody Allen

  Art, Real, Nice

• I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Wish, Comedy

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

• My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Years, Done

  "Woody Allen gives you two for one in Melinda and Melinda". Interview with Julian Roman, movieweb.com. March 17, 2005.

• I have great faith in the actors. When they improvise, it always sounds better than the stuff I write in my bedroom. When they improvise, they make it sound alive.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Sound, Actors

  "Woody Allen Interview To Rome With Love". Press conference with Woody Allen, www.moviesonline.ca. June, 2012.

• It's all through the actors; I cannot write in that idiom

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Actors, Idiom

• To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Editing, Democracy

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

• When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Play, My Own

  "Woody Allen gives you two for one in Melinda and Melinda". Interview with Julian Roman, movieweb.com. March 17, 2005.

• I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back.

  Woody Allen

  Beautiful, Morning, Home

  "Woody Allen Interview To Rome With Love". Press conference with Woody Allen, www.moviesonline.ca. June, 2012.

• It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to. Writing is very pleasurable, very seductive, and very therapeutic. Time passes very fast when I'm writing-really fast. I'm puzzling over something, and time just flies by. It's an exhilarating feeling. How bad can it be? It's sitting alone with fictional characters. You're escaping from the world in your own way and that's fine. Why not?

  Woody Allen

  Character, Writing, Exhilarating Feeling

• I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.

  Woody Allen

  Writing, Taught, Comedy

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