Mel Brooks
I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.Collection: Wind
I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.Collection: Witty
Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.Collection: People
Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'Collection: Artist
The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision--it pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.Collection: Opposites
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.Collection: Admirer
Nothing is free. You got to pay to be in society. First you start with homework.Collection: Pay
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.Collection: People
Now thyself is more important than “Know thyself.Collection: Important
I was adored [as a kid]. I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again. Until I was six, my feet didn't touch the ground. "Look at those eyes! That nose! Those lips! That tooth! Get that child away from me, quick! I'll eat him!" Giving that up was very difficult later on in life.Collection: Children
Everything starts with writing.Collection: Writing
An egg cream can do anything. An egg cream to a Brooklyn Jew is like water to an Arab. A Jew will kill for an egg cream. It's the Jewish malmsey.Collection: Eggs
The audience. They see the name Mel Brooks, they want something really funny. They don't want to be moved; they don't want to be taught any lessons. [...] I get more letters for Twelve Chairs and Life Stinks than I get from any other movies, because people actually agree with the philosophy, or were moved, or they love the movie.Collection: Philosophy
Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen. So if you have a valuable idea, the only way to protect it is to direct it.Collection: Ideas
When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.Collection: Writing
I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?Collection: People
Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.Collection: Believe
The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.Collection: Wall
My liveliness is based on an incredible fear of death. In order to keep death at bay, I do a lot of "Yah! Yah! Yah!" And death says, "All right. He's too noisy and busy. I'll wait for someone who's sitting quietly, half asleep."Collection: Order
I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.Collection: Song
My God, I'd love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, 'Well done, you god-damn genius.'Collection: Hands
The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated.Collection: Appreciation
I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.Collection: Eye
There's no such thing as too far. If it works it's funny, if it doesn't work it's too far, it's stupid. Really there's no such thing as "too far." You're joining the politically correct when you use words like "too far." You don't want to join the army of politically correct.Collection: Stupid
THE 2,000-YEAR-OLD MAN'S SECRETS OF LONGEVITY 1. Don't run for a bus - there'll always be another. 2. Never, ever touch fried food. 3. Stay out of a Ferrari or any other small Italian car. 4. Eat fruit - a nectarine - even a rotten plum is good.Collection: Running
Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.Collection: People
Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.Collection: Crazy
I had low blood sugar, a chemical imbalance, plus the normal nervous breakdown everyone goes through from adolescence to adulthood.Collection: Blood
Be interested in everything. You don't have to adore it. I don't adore hip-hop, I don't think it's great music, but I'm interested, I listen. I watch a lot of new films, I see everything. I still read, I like books, whether they are old books, new books. I'm interested - you gotta stay interested!Collection: Book
My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head.Collection: Mother
In real life people fart, in the movies, people don't. Why not? Farts are a repressed minority. The mouth gets to say all kinds of things, but the other place is supposed to keep quiet. But maybe our lower colons have something interesting to say. Maybe we should listen to them. Farts are human, more human than a lot of people I know. I think we should bring them out of the water closet and into the parlor.Collection: Real
The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you.Collection: Crazy
I love spaghetti and sex, sometimes together. My dream of heaven is walking naked through fields of pasta fazool.Collection: Dream
There's not enough bad taste! I LOVE bad taste! I live for bad taste! I am the spokesman for bad taste!Collection: Taste
You cannot have fun with anything that you don't love or admire or respect.Collection: Fun
All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.Collection: Hatred
My favorite expression is: When you go up to the bell, ring it ? or don't go up to the bell.Collection: Expression
One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.Collection: One Day
When we got to our hotel rooms, mosquitoes as big as George Foreman were waiting for us. They were sitting in armchairs with their legs crossed.Collection: Waiting
Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together.Collection: Art
I don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?Collection: Thinking
Usually when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.Collection: War
I was born on the kitchen table. We were so poor my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me.Collection: Mother
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.Collection: Inspirational
Do you have a dollar on you? I hate to answer questions for nothing.Collection: Hate
The Twelve Chairs is about the same thing. It's all about money or love. We know we need money, we know we have to get money, we know we have to hurt others to get money. But we don't know until maybe it's a little too late in life that love is the most important thing. Love, friendship, affection, bonhomie, whatever. Those are the only things that really count: to love and be loved.Collection: Hurt
When you get big special effects pictures, sci-fi and things, there's little or no comedy. Or it's a domestic comedy and there's not one special effect. But very rarely do these things fuse and come out right.Collection: Special
Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and everyone else should be incinerated. They don't know right from wrong. That's what makes a satire of these government bureaus really funny.Collection: Government
When I was a little kid at home, I thought the whole world was Jewish. For years I thought Roosevelt was Jewish. I loved him. I thought of him as my father. I'm always stunned when I find out that people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?Collection: Father