Mel Brooks
I've always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.Collection: Years
Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.Collection: Heart
No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.Collection: Writing
The audience got jaded, they want a hit, they want a big success, and so you don't want to experiment because you say, well, I'll disappoint the audience, they may not like it, I better do something that I think is more commercial.Collection: Thinking
What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that philosophical treatise about having black beginnings and wanting love to compensate for that, wanting audiences and wanting attention - I say, "Au contraire." Completely opposite. I want the continuation of my mother's incredible love and attention to me.Collection: Mother
In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.Collection: Real
Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl's refrigerator.Collection: Girl
Being brave is being scared and worried and still doing it [what you do]. Because if you're just a wacko, a mashugana, a crazy guy, then you're not brave, your nuts!Collection: Crazy
Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin.Collection: Laughing
Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.Collection: Writing
I also try to surround myself with people I love - make a family out of the company. So I tend to use the same people over and over. There's a sort of Mel Brooks Repertory Company.Collection: People
I make people laugh for a living. I believe I can say objectively that what I do I do as well as anybody. Just say I'm one of the best broken field runners that ever lived. For 35 years I was a cult hero, an underground funny.Collection: Believe
Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.Collection: Genius
Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.Collection: Money
Directing is a terrible, anxious process. It's all collaboration, and if you have a dream, it's diluted very quickly by the slightest ineptness in any of your collaborators. They're supposed to help you, but too often they help you into your grave.Collection: Dream
When I was a little boy, I thought when I grew up I would talk Yiddish. I thought little kids talked English, but when they became adults, they would talk Yiddish like the adults did. There would be no reason to talk English anymore, because we would have made it.Collection: Kids
Look, I had to take chances or it wasn’t fun being funny.Collection: Fun
You cannot have fun with anything that you don’t love or admire or respect.Collection: Fun
There’s an army story in me, and I think there’s a WWII Brooks film somewhere.Collection: Stories