Mel Brooks
As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.
I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.
All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it's a sign of security.
Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.Collection: Inspirational
I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.Collection: Psychics
Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.Collection: Tragedy
When I was a little kid, if somebody said they were thirty-five, I'd say "Oooh, they're going to die soon". But as I get older it doesn't mean a thing. You mustn't ever give in. Never give in to thinking you're old, because you're never old. Your mind, and I tell you this and listen to me carefully, your mind is never, ever old, it's eternally young.Collection: Mean
The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that it's coming quickly.Collection: Sex
With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth... the criticCollection: Artist
Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.Collection: People
You want to be as smart as you can about being stupid.Collection: Smart
Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.Collection: Cat
I don't know what to say so I'll just say what's in my heart...badoom, badoom, badoom.Collection: Funny Life
If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.Collection: Opposites
Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.Collection: Suicide
Never retire! Do what you do and keep doing it. But don't do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, go fishing...Then Monday to Thursday, do what you've been doing all your life. My point is: Live full and don't retreat.Collection: Friday
Comedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help.Collection: Writing
Let's have a merry journey, and shout about how light is good and dark is not. What we should do is not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves. "Now thyself" is more important than "know thyself." Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be green pastures. It's crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.Collection: Crazy
I've been taught ever since I was a kid that sex is filthy and forbidden, and that's the way I think it should be. The filthier and more forbidden it is, the more exciting it is.Collection: Sex
Humor keeps the elderly rolling along, singing a song. When you laugh, its an involuntary explosion of the lungs. The lungs need to replenish themselves with oxygen. So you laugh, you breathe, the blood runs, and everything is circulating. If you dont laugh, youll die.Collection: Running
I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business.Collection: Way
Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!"Collection: Boys
We mock the things we are to be.Collection: Mock
I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.Collection: Bridges
Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.Collection: Hollywood
I always thought it was great to be able to make people feel better. It was a little like being God.Collection: Feel Better
Ill just say whats in my heart: Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.Collection: Heart
I try to give my work everything I've got, because when you're dead or you're out of the business or you're in an old actors' home somewhere, if you've done a good job, your work will still be 16 years old and dancing and healthy and pirouetting and arabesquing all over the place. And they'll say, "That's who he is! He's not this decaying skeleton."Collection: Jobs
Making a movie is like making an ocean voyage, and the script is your ship.Collection: Ocean
My movies were not reaping the kind of emotional rewards that I wanted. I wanted them to be appreciated and they weren't. I didn't want the reviews to say, "Mel Brooks has made another movie," and you get the title somewhere in the second paragraph.Collection: Emotional
My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible. The job is to make people laugh. I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.Collection: Jobs
I started with [Leo] Tolstoy and I was overwhelmed. Tolstoy writes like an ocean, in huge, rolling waves, and it doesn't look like it was processed through his thinking. It feels very natural. You don't question whether Tolstoy's right or wrong. His philosophy is housed in interrelating characters, so it's not up for grabs.Collection: Philosophy
You want me to admit I'm a four-foot, six-inch freckle-faced person of Jewish extraction? I admit it. All but the extraction. But being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.Collection: Suicide
You often hear that people go into show business to find the love they never had when they were children. Never believe it! Every comic and most of the actors I know had a childhood full of love. Then they grew up and found out that in the grown-up world, you don't get all that love, you just get your share. So they went into show business to recapture the love they had known as children when they were the center of the universe.Collection: Children
American sex is generally straight. It happens at 11 o'clock Saturday night. In the rural areas, it happens at nine and it happens pretty fast. Got to get up the next morning, especially if there're kids. Can't make noise, either, wake the kids.Collection: Morning
Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!Collection: Funny
That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.Collection: Life
Don’t be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!Collection: Stupid
Jewish women are very exciting, as exciting sexually as any other group. Even so, my advice to a young man marrying a Jewish girl would be to have three and a half years of foreplay. Of course, most girls in every group are reserved about getting down to it. They don't usually do it right away. But once they do it, women are bananas. They don't wanna do it, you can't make them do it, there's no way they'll do it - but once they do it, they don't let you alone.Collection: Girl
If Ivan the Terrible had been kissed and loved between zero and three, he probably would have become Ivan Not So Terrible. If you're Jewish, you have a small smile on your face. Because you know the rest are wrong and you don't want to hurt their feelings.Collection: Hurt
I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.Collection: Jobs
My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.Collection: Creative
You're young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don't have any dementia or Alzheimer's, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.Collection: Writing
It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.Collection: Issues
The only weapon I've got is comedyCollection: Weapons
It's good to be the king.Collection: Kings
I realised that all one really had to do was just observe. Observe and slightly exaggerate, and you had comedy. Instead of creating a mythical premise for a stupid joke, I found playing off truth got the best result.Collection: Stupid
I'm married to a beautiful and talented woman who can lift your spirits just by looking at you.Collection: Beautiful
Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.Collection: Fun