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I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things — because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.

— Woody Allen

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More quotes by Woody Allen

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

Stardust Memories (1980)

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

Without Feathers (1975)

Love is the answer. But while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.

Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!

The difference between sex and death is, with death you can do it alone and nobody's going to make fun of you.

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Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

George Herbert The Temple (1633)

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

Horace Walpole

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Horace Walpole

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Woody Allen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.