If you’re not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
I never thought of it as God. I didn’t know what to call it. I don’t believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
I like writing books. I’d rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It’s not so bad. I am really lucky.
The suspense is terrible. I hope it’ll last.
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
My basic mistake in ‘The World’s Greatest Lover’ was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.
To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.
The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that’s all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way.
Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.
I don’t mean to sound – I don’t want it to come out funny, but I don’t like show business. I love – I love acting in films. I love it.
My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
Woody makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic, or political.
I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That’s why I call it irony.
But the acting process – create a human being – was real, not only to the audience, but real to me.
When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.
Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.