A Nervous Romance

Here are some memorable quotes from the movie Annie Hall, one of my favorite movie and Woddy Allen masterpiece. It's witty, funny, smart, almost autistic and quite a phenomenon at its time, especially with the first time ever actor talking to the camera treatment.

[first lines]
Alvy Singer: [addressing the camera] There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill 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. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.


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?


[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?


[last lines]
Alvy Singer: [narrating] After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought 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?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs.