Back
to - Film
Quotes - A
Annie
Hall
Alvy Singer: Don't you see the rest of the country looks
upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers?
I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.
Alvy:
My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.
Annie
Hall: La-di-da, la-di-da, la la.
[After
sex with Annie.]
Alvy: That was the most fun I've ever had without laughing.
[In
California.]
Annie: It's so clean out here!
Alvy: That's because they
don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.
Annie
Hall: So you wanna go into the movie or what?
Alvy Singer: No, I can't go
into a movie that's already started, because I'm anal.
Annie Hall: That's
a polite word for what you are.
Duane:
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist,I think you'll understand.
Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming
toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on
into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering
glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
Alvy: Right. Well,
I have to-- I have to go now, Duane, because I, I'm due back on the planet Earth.
[On
the phone with his guru.]
Party guest: I forgot my mantra.
Alvy:
What's with all these awards? They're always giving out awards! Best Fascist Dictator:
Adolf Hitler!
[Alvy
addresses a pair of strangers on the street.]
Alvy Singer: Here, you look
like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah?
So, so, how do you account for it?
Stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty
and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Stranger: And I'm exactly
the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see! Wow! That's very interesting. So you've
managed to work out something?
Alvy:
There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort,
and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible."
The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's
essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering
and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.
Alvy
Singer: I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being
able to make a right turn on a red light.
[After
Annie parks the car.]
Alvy Singer: Don't worry. We can walk to the curb from
here.
Annie
Hall: Sometimes I ask myself how I'd stand up under torture.
Alvy Singer:
You? You kiddin'? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale's charge card,
you'd tell 'em everything.
Alvy
Singer: Annie, there's a big lobster behind the refrigerator. I can't get it out.
This thing's heavy. Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker,
it will run out the other side.
Annie
Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, just for fifteen years.
Annie
Hall: Fifteen years?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I'm gonna give him one more year,
and then I'm goin' to Lourdes.
Alvy
Singer: A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly
move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
Alvy
Singer: Love is too weak a word for what I feel -- I luuurve you, you know, I
loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I -- I do, don't
you think I do?
[Annie
wants to smoke marijuana before sex.]
Alvy Singer: Yeah, grass, right? The
illusion that it will make a white woman more like Billie Holiday.
Annie Hall:
Well, have you ever made love high?
Alvy Singer: Me? No. I -- I, you know,
If I have grass or alcohol or anything, I get unbearably wonderful. I get too,
too wonderful for words. I don't know why you have to get high every time we make
love.
Annie Hall: It relaxes me.
Alvy Singer: You have to be artificially
relaxed before we can go to bed?
Annie Hall: Well, what's the difference anyway?
Alvy Singer: Well, I'll give you a shot of sodium pentathol. You can sleep
through it.
Annie Singer: Oh come on. Look who's talking. You've been seeing
a psychiatrist for 15 years. You should smoke some of this. You'd be off the couch
in no time.
[Alvy's
having sex with Annie.]
Alvy Singer: Hey, is something wrong?
Annie Hall:
No, why?
Alvy Singer: I don't know. It's like you're removed.
[A ghost
of Annie rises from herself, and sits in a chair to watch.]
Annie Hall: No,
I'm fine.
Alvy Singer: Are you with me?
Annie Hall: Uh, huh.
Alvy
Singer: I don't know. You seem sort of distant.
Annie Hall: Let's just do
it, all right?
Alvy Singer: Is it my imagination, or are you just going through
the motions?
Annie's Ghost: Alvy, do you remember where I put my drawing pad?
Because while you two are doing that, I think I'm going to do some drawing.
Alvy
Singer: You see, that's what I call removed!
[Alvy
Singer does a stand-up comic act for a college audience.]
Alvy Singer: I was
thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you
know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown
out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the
bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles. I was depressed at that time.
I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and 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.
[Alvy
confronts Annie about having an affair.]
Alvy Singer: Well, I didn't start
out spying. I thought I'd surprise you. Pick you up after school.
Annie Hall:
Yeah, but you wanted to keep the relationship flexible. Remember, it's your phrase.
Alvy Singer: Oh stop it, you're having an affair with your college professor,
that jerk that teaches that incredible crap course, Contemporary Crisis in Western
Man...
Annie Hall: Existential Motifs in Russian Literature. You're really
close.
Alvy Singer: What's the difference? It's all mental masturbation.
Annie
Hall: Oh, well, now we're finally getting to a subject you know something about.
Alvy Singer: Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
Annie Hall: We're not having an affair. He's married. He just happens to think
I'm neat.
Alvy Singer: "Neat." What are you, 12 years old? That's
one of your Chippewa Falls expressions.
Annie Hall: Who cares? Who cares?
Alvy Singer: Next thing you know, he'll find you keen and peachy, you know.
Next thing you know, he's got his hand on your ass.
Annie Hall: You've always
had hostility towards David, ever since I mentioned him.
Alvy Singer: Dav--
you call your teacher David?
Annie Hall: It's his name.
Alvy Singer: It's
a Biblical name, right? What does he call you, Bathsheba?
Annie
Hall: So I told her about, about the family and about my feelings towards men
and about my relationship with my brother. And then she mentioned penis envy.
Do you know about that?
Alvy Singer: Me? I'm, I'm one of the few males who
suffers from that.
[Alvy
questions an older couple on the street about their sex life.]
Alvy Singer:
With your wife in bed, does she need some kind of artificial stimulation, like,
like marijuana?
Older Man: We use a large vibrating egg.
Pam:
Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience.
Alvy Singer: Oh. Thank you.
Pam: I mean that as a compliment.
Alvy
Singer: I think, I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know,
to make up for empty areas in life.
Pam: Who said that?
Alvy Singer: It
may have been Leopold and Loeb.
[Alvy
sees Rolling Stone and The National Review in Annie's apartment.]
Alvy Singer:
Are you going with a right-wing rock 'n roll star?
Alvy
Singer: Honey, there's a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.
[Alvy
has killed two spiders.]
Alvy Singer: I did it. I killed 'em both.
[Annie
starts crying.]
Alvy Singer: What's the matter? What are you sad about? What
did you want me to do? Capture 'em and rehabilitate 'em?
Alvy
Singer: You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I -- I don't
respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to -- if I get
too mellow, I -- I ripen and then rot, you know.
[Alvy
is asked to try cocaine]
Alvy Singer: I don't want to put a wad of white powder
in my nose. There's the nasal membrane...
Annie Hall: You never want to try
anything new, Alvy.
Alvy Singer: How can you say that? Whose idea was it?
I said that you, I and that girl from your acting class should sleep together
in a threesome.
Annie Hall: Well, that's sick!
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I know
it's sick, but it's new. You didn't say it couldn't be sick.
Annie
Hall: Alvy, you're incapable of enjoying life, you know that? I mean you're like
New York City. You're just this person. You're like this island unto yourself.
Alvy Singer: I can't enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving
someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.
Alvy
Singer: I remember the staff at our public school. You know, we had a saying,
uh, that those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym. And,
uh, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school.
Alvy
Singer: They did not take me in the Army. I was, um, interestingly enough, I was,
I was 4-P. Yes. In the, in the event of war, I'm a hostage.
Annie
Hall: You're what Grammy Hall would call a real Jew.
Alvy Singer: Oh. Thank
you.
Alvy
Singer: In 1942 I had already discovered women.
[Young Alvy kisses girl in
school]
Alvy's Classmate: Yecch! He kissed me, he kissed me. Yecch!
School
Teacher: That's the second time this month. Step up here.
Alvy at 9: What'd
I do?
School Teacher: Step up here!
Alvy at 9: What did I do?
School
Teacher: You should be ashamed of yourself.
Alvy Singer: Why? I was just expressing
a healthy sexual curiosity.
School Teacher: Six year old boys don't have girls
on their minds.
Alvy Singer: I did.
Alvy's Classmate: For God's sake,
Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.
Alvy Singer: Well, I never had
a latency period. I can't help it.
Alvy
Singer: I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who
work for "Dysentery."
Robin: "Commentary."
Alvy Singer:
Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had
merged and formed "Dysentery."
Allison:
I'm in the midst of doing my thesis.
Alvy Singer: On what?
Allison: Political
commitment in twentieth century literature.
Alvy Singer: You, you, you're
like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis
University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn
drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper,
stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.
Allison: No, that was
wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
Alvy Singer: Right,
I'm a bigot, I know, but for the left.
Robin:
There's Henry Drucker. He has a chair in history at Princeton. Oh, and the short
man is Hershel Kaminsky. He has a chair in philosophy at Cornell.
Alvy Singer:
Yeah? Two more chairs they got a dining room set.
Alvy
Singer: I though of that old joke, y'know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist
and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And,
uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy
says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much
how I feel about relationships. Y'know, they're totally irrational and crazy and
absurd and, but, uh, I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us
need the eggs.
Alvy
Singer: My "Grammy" never gave out presents. She was too busy being
raped by Cossacks.
Alvy
Singer: Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun,
milk, red meat... college.
[Annie's
family and Alvy's family converse through a split screen.]
Mom Hall: How do
you plan to spend the holidays, Mrs. Singer?
Alvy's Mom: We fast.
Dad
Hall: Fast?
Alvy's Dad: No food. You know, to atone for our sins.
Mom
Hall: What sins? I don't understand.
Alvy's Dad: To tell you the truth, neither
do we.
[Alvy
fantasizes being in love with the Wicked Queen from Snow White.]
Wicked Queen:
We never have any fun any more.
Alvy Singer: How can you say that?
Wicked
Queen: Why not? You're always leaning on me to improve yourself.
Alvy Singer:
You're just upset. You must be getting your period.
Wicked Queen: I don't
get a period! I'm a cartoon character!
Alvy
Singer: Lyndon Johnson is a politician, you know the ethics those guys have. It's
like a notch underneath child molester!
Alvy
Singer: You're an actor Max, you should be doing Shakespeare in the park.
Rob:
Oh I did Shakespeare in the park Max, I got mugged. I was playing Richard II and
two guys in leather jackets stole my leotard.
Alvy
Singer's Therapist: How often do you sleep together?
Alvy Singer: Hardly ever,
maybe three times a week.
Annie Hall's Therapist: Do you have sex often?
Annie
Hall: Constantly, I'd say three times a week.
[On
Pam being a Rosicrucian.]
Alvy Singer: I can't get with any religion that
advertises in Popular Mechanics.
Alvy
Singer: Oh my God, she's right. Why did I turn off Allison Portchnik? She was
beautiful, she was willing. She was real intelligent. Is it the old Groucho Marx
joke that I'm - I just don't want to belong to any club that would have someone
like me for a member?