Woody Allen: ‘I’ve spent my whole life under a cloud’ - Telegraph

"This last is no minor consideration, considering that Allen – born Allen Stewart Konisberg in The Bronx – claims to have become aware of his own mortality and the existential abyss at the tender age of five. 'I remember the dark cloud descending then, and I've walked around under it my entire life,' he says matter-of-factly. 'There's a neuro-biological theory that these things are imprinted, hardwired – this guy's gloomy, this one's sunny – and there's nothing you can do about it. We're not born with a clean slate, as Sartre would have you think; rather, we have a little photograph on our negative and it's how you manage that in the developing fluid. Some manage that process better than others, but the imprint is always there. So I need to work to keep my gloom at bay.'”