Mel Brooks
I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.Collection: Business
Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.Collection: Death
Humor is just another defense against the universe.Collection: Humor
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.Collection: Funny
A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.Collection: Movies
I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.Collection: Religion
If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.Collection: Death
Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.Collection: Truth
Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.Collection: Chance
Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.Collection: Fear
If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.Collection: Funny
If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.
If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.
I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.
Well, you know, 'Spaceballs' is a weird combination, because it's a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it's crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, 'Star Wars', and 'Star Trek'.
I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
Immortality is a by-product of good work.
Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.
There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.
Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.
You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.
I'm still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.
If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.
He who hesitates is poor.
Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.
You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.
I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.
A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity. We're all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.
I wish I was better looking.
My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.
We rest our case on the production numbers.
I only direct in self-defense.
We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.
These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.
Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.
'Mad About You' was very fun.
When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.
I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.
I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.
I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.
No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.