Some quotes from a recent Woody Allen interview.
“I feel the only way you can get through life is distraction. And you can distract yourself in a million different ways, from turning on the television set and seeing who wins the meaningless soccer game, to going to the movies or listening to music. They’re tricks that I’ve done and that many people do. You create problems in your life and it seems to the outside observer that you are self-destructive and it’s foolish. But you’re creating them because they’re not mortal problems. They are problems that can be solved, or they can’t be solved, and they’re a little painful, perhaps, but they are not going to take your life away.”
“There were never children in my films. I didn’t care about children. I mean, I didn’t dislike them but I just had no thoughts about children. If my wife, years ago, when I first married as a young man, had wanted to have 10 children, it was fine with me, or no children, it didn’t matter. And then I remember when I did the movie Manhattan I made a list at the end of the movie of the things that made life worth living, and I got a letter from a lady saying, ‘You didn’t mention your child.’ Because I had a child in the movie with Meryl Streep, a young boy.
“And you know I’d mentioned Louis Armstrong and Marlon Brando, and I figured, so, I didn’t mention my child, so what? I mentioned things that were meaningful. It was only when I had children, over a decade later, that I realised what an egregious blunder that was. That of course someone with a child would mention it. So children have become very, very meaningful to me. Because they add an amazing dimension to your life. But even then, I’m aware of the fact that nature is nature in its most brutal way. You devote yourself to them, it’s a one-way street, it’s unconditional positive regard, no matter what happens, and they grow up and go out on their own and you become a very minor annoyance.”
“I’ve always felt that if the delusion works, it’s great. I always think that people who have religious faith are always happier than people who do not. The problem is that it’s not something you can adopt. It has to come naturally.”
