Woody Allen at 81: On Life, Death & What It All Means (Hint: Nothing)

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying,” Woody Allen, who turns 81 today, once quipped. “I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

To mark the birthday milestone, we take a look back at Allen’s most famous musings on life, death and what it all means (hint: it means pretty much nothing):

On birth and babies:

“When I asked my mother where babies came from, she thought I said ‘rabies.’ She said you get them from being bitten by a dog. The next week, a woman on my block gave birth to triplets…I thought she’d been bitten by a Great Dane.”

On childhood curiosity:

“I’m twelve years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life but he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don’t understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me $600 for Hebrew lessons.”

On work:

“I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don’t care about the films. I don’t care if they’re flushed down the toilet after I die.”

On life and what it’s all about:

“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable.”

“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon.”

“What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”

On relationships:

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

“I thought of that old joke: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken.’ And 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 now how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

On aging:

“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

On facing death:

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

On doing it all over again:

“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”