Top 100 Mel Brooks Quotes

#1. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #40290
#2. I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #45901
#3. Usually when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #94183
#4. I knew it ... I'm surrounded by assholes!

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #121739
#5. The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision
it pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #127126
#6. I don't know what to say so I'll just say what's in my heart ... badoom, badoom, badoom.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #190236
#7. The only weapon I've got is comedy

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #239085
#8. With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth ... the critic

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #272541
#9. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #275291
#10. Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #313101
#11. I don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #382916
#12. Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #396640
#13. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #398719
#14. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #438333
#15. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #473473
#16. Immortality is a by-product of good work.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #491127
#17. If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #503397
#18. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #505127
#19. Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #510274
#20. We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #591628
#21. 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!

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #608080
#22. We rest our case on the production numbers.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #632065
#23. If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #641877
#24. I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #670645
#25. Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #694294
#26. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #721478
#27. A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #747515
#28. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #750886
#29. The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation ... but I hear that it's coming quickly.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #771495
#30. You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #775309
#31. There's a lot of things that I've done to stick into the box set. You never have it this good. I think people should bargain. They shouldn't just buy the set, it's a little expensive [anyway]. But they should say - I'll give them dialogue, I'm a good writer.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #810076
#32. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #835735
#33. Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #845116
#34. I'm married to a beautiful and talented woman who can lift your spirits just by looking at you.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #849657
#35. You want to be as smart as you can about being stupid.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #851356
#36. Do you have a dollar on you? I hate to answer questions for nothing.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #880067
#37. The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #887244
#38. I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #890448
#39. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #987331
#40. It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #991577
#41. If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1006890
#42. As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1008389
#43. I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1022527
#44. 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!"

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1023163
#45. If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1038709
#46. It's good to be the king.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1055943
#47. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1059946
#48. My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1074055
#49. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1076485
#50. A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1077001
#51. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1093968
#52. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1096215
#53. 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.'

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1117732
#54. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1120048
#55. I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1146191
#56. I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1185957
#57. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1201570
#58. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1211430
#59. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1211601
#60. Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1218552
#61. If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1238596
#62. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1277915
#63. Good taste is the enemy of comedy.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1289371
#64. Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1290533
#65. Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1302167
#66. I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1321240
#67. Everything starts with writing.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1322606
#68. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1322859
#69. I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1329831
#70. I wish I was better looking.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1332455
#71. Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1411177
#72. I only direct in self-defense.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1418540
#73. You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1475477
#74. Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1495745
#75. There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1503266
#76. Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1546271
#77. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1548031
#78. I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1574417
#79. It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1601183
#80. Could be worse ... could be raining."

- Igor

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1614937
#81. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1641627
#82. If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1651052
#83. Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1663719
#84. But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1666226
#85. In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1673206
#86. One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1677547
#87. Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1689290
#88. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1695600
#89. 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'.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1724816
#90. Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl's refrigerator.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1753737
#91. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1764378
#92. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1814104
#93. Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1820499
#94. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1821475
#95. I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1832702
#96. When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1842121
#97. No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1843373
#98. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1847505
#99. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1851266
#100. 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.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks Quotes #1869800

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