"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end," Woody Allen, "Side Effects," 1980.

"Marvelling at how easily he took the path to eternity, downwards he raced." Franz Kafka, Zürauer Aphorismen 1917-1918.

OK, I am quite certain that this expression was uttered by Woody Allen in one of his movies (I forget which one, but I very well remember sitting in the theater and listening to Woody Allen say these words).  So it drives me nuts that one of our French chessfriends here, Djy, has this quotation appended to all his posts:

"L'éternité, c'est long...surtout vers la fin!  KAFKA"

I PM'd him about this and he says he's not sure, but everyone in France thinks it's Kafka.  I say it's Woody Allen.  Who is right?  (Actually I googled on the French expression and discovered that there are actually a few Frenchmen who agree with Djy, but even among the French it appears that many or most people think that the words are Woody Allen's).

Actually I think it's rather weird to attribute this to Kafka.  I've read his major works, and he simply would never have said such a thing.  I know that he considered much of his work to be very funny, but a sense of humor that would laugh at The Castle clearly does not accord with the humorous sense of the disputed quotation.

Further the quotation clearly displays a kind of humor characteristic of Woody Allen.  Allen said, for example, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.   I want to achieve it by not dying."

So, sez I, Djy has his head up it and his Kafka attribution is bogus.  He's wrong, and if 70 million Frenchmen agree with him, so are they.  I defy anyone to find this quotation in Kafka.

P.S. Does anyone recall in which movie Woody Allen said this?  I've googled and it's always attributed to Allen, but never with a citation.  The internet is such crap.