I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm taking an extra pair of underwear just in case.
Woody AllenRead
As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don’t do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then?
Interpretation
The quote expresses the endless pursuit of artistic perfection and the joy found in the journey, rather than the end result.
Woody Allen reflects on the nature of being an artist, where the pursuit of perfection is a continuous journey filled with experimentation and learning from failures. He emphasizes that the joy of creating art lies not in achieving flawless results but in the process itself. For him, the goal is not monetary success but rather the exploration of ideas, leaving him with a sense of purpose and motivation.
In practice
A filmmaker discussing their latest project might quote Allen to highlight the creative process over the final product.
I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm taking an extra pair of underwear just in case.
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion... no, make that: he - he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.
There are three rings involved with marriage. The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.
I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
I was in analysis. I was suicidal. As a matter of fact, I would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss.
Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
We don't make music, it makes us
When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.
I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.
The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.
She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.
Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.
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