Mel Brooks

My mind is a raging torrent flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.

I wish I was better looking.

Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

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.

But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.

Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.

Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

'Mad About You' was very fun.

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.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

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'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.

We rest our case on the production numbers.

Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.

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.

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.

You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.

I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.

I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.

Nothing is free. You got to pay to be in society. First you start with homework.

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.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

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.

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.

You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

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 only direct in self-defense.

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.

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.

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.

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

He who hesitates is poor.

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.