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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.

-Mel Brooks

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I Started With [leo]

Mel Brooks

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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.

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My Job Is To Go Out And Entertain The Most People Possible.

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.

As Long As The World Is Turning And Spinning, We're Gonna Be Dizzy And We're Gonna Make Mistakes.

Spinning Around

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.

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."

I Don't Believe In This Business Of Being Behind, Better To Be In Front.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Know How To Make It A Great Musical. I've Got To. It's Like I've Got To See It On Stage.

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.

Hope For The Best. Expect The Worst. Life Is A Play. We're Unrehearsed.

I've Been Accused Of Vulgarity. I Say That's Bullshit.

Every Human Being Has Hundreds Of Separate People Living Under His Skin.

Do You Have A Dollar On You? I Hate To Answer Questions For Nothing.

There's An Army Story In Me, And I Think There's A Wwii Brooks Film Somewhere.

But I Have Bad Taste With A Deep Fount Of Intellectuality.

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.

I Love Writing Songs. I'm A Songwriter.

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.

I Only Direct In Self-defense.

I've Always Loved Songwriting, And I Vowed To Be A Songwriter Like Cole Porter When I Was Only 9 Years Old.

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.

Everything We Do In Life Is Based On Fear, Especially Love.

Critics Can't Even Make Music By Rubbing Their Back Legs Together.

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.

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.

With The Birth Of The Artist Came The Inevitable Afterbirth... The Critic

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.

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.

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!

Don’t Be Stupid, Be A Smarty / Come And Join The Nazi Party!

Humor Is Just Another Defense Against The Universe.

Merchandising, Merchandising, Where The Real Money From The Movie Is Made.

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.

Writing Is Simply One Thought After Another Dying Upon The One Before.

One Day, God Said 'let There Be Prey.' And He Created Pigeons, Rabbits, Lambs And Gene Wilder.

You Want To Be As Smart As You Can About Being Stupid.

Not Only Should We Laugh About Hitler. We Must Laugh About Him. Especially In Berlin.

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.

If God Wanted Us To Fly, He Would Have Given Us Tickets.

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.

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.

I Like Chris Rock. He's Dangerous.

I Wanted To Entertain So Badly That I Kept At It Until I Was Good. I Just Browbeat My Way Into Show Business.

A Cinema Villain Essentially Needs A Moustache So He Can Twiddle With It Gleefully As He Cooks Up His Next Nasty Plan.

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.

I Was In The Army, And To Me It Was Like A Newsreel.

If You Stand On A Soapbox And Trade Rhetoric With A Dictator You Never Win.

Good Taste Is The Enemy Of Comedy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Have Fun With Anything That You Don't Love Or Admire Or Respect.

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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 Knew It... I'm Surrounded By Assholes!

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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.

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.'

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.

If Shaw And Einstein Couldn't Beat Death, What Chance Have I Got? Practically None.

Making A Movie Is Like Making An Ocean Voyage, And The Script Is Your Ship.

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.

Being Short Never Bothered Me For Three Seconds. The Rest Of The Time I Wanted To Commit Suicide.

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.

Tragedy Is When I Cut My Finger. Comedy Is When You Fall Into An Open Sewer And Die.

Ill Just Say Whats In My Heart: Ba-bump, Ba-bump, Ba-bump.

Coleman Jacoby And Arnie Rosen Won An Emmy And Mel Brooks Didn't! Niezsche Was Right! There Is No God! There Is No God!

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.

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.

Judd Apatow Is Pretty Good, Both As A Producer And As A Director.

Cat Angels Are The Reason There Are No Mice Angels.

I'll Accept Bad Taste In A Minute, As Long As There's Some Great Comedy Minds And Performances.

My Mind Is A Raging Torrent, Flooded With Rivulets Of Thought Cascading Into A Waterfall Of Creative Alternatives.

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.

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.

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.

I'm Always Stunned When I Find Out People Like Roosevelt And Tolstoy Weren't Jewish. How Could I Love Them So Much?

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.

When You Come To Germany As A Jew You Have An Uneasy Feeling, But I've Always Felt Okay In Berlin.

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.

Dom Deluise Was A Big Man In Every Way. He Was Big In Size And Created Big Laughter And Joy.

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.

We Want To Get People Laughing; We Don't Want To Offend Anybody.

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.

Anybody Can Direct, But There Are Only Eleven Good Writers.

I Love Spaghetti And Sex, Sometimes Together. My Dream Of Heaven Is Walking Naked Through Fields Of Pasta Fazool.

I Don't Think In Terms Of Results At All. I Think: What Next Insanity Can I Shock The World With?

Creative People Should Always Be Striving, They Should Always Be Hungry, They Should Be Looking For The Next Place To Go.

You Got To Be Brave. If You Feel Something, You've Really Got To Risk It.

I Don't Know What To Say So I'll Just Say What's In My Heart...badoom, Badoom, Badoom.

My Favorite Expression Is: When You Go Up To The Bell, Ring It ? Or Don't Go Up To The Bell.

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'.

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.

That's It Baby, If You've Got It, Flaunt It.

Life Literally Abounds In Comedy If You Just Look Around You.

In Every Spoof I Make Real Love To The Things I Am Spoofing.

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.

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.

He Who Hesitates Is Poor.

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.

The Only Thing We Don't Have A God For Is Premature Ejaculation... But I Hear That It's Coming Quickly.

Premature Ejaculation

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.

My Mother Is Very Short - Four-eleven. She Could Walk Under Tables And Never Hit Her Head.

I Had Low Blood Sugar, A Chemical Imbalance, Plus The Normal Nervous Breakdown Everyone Goes Through From Adolescence To Adulthood.

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!

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.

My Brothers Went To Work At 12 And Put Themselves Through School And Brought The Family Out Of Ruin Into Food And Clothing.

Now Thyself Is More Important Than “know Thyself.

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.

Nothing Is Free. You Got To Pay To Be In Society. First You Start With Homework.

A Lot Of Music Is Mathematics. It's Balance.

Tragedy Is What Happens To Me; Comedy Is What Happens To You.

Why Should I Waste My Good Time Making A Straight Dramatic Film? The People Who Can't Make You Laugh Can Do That.

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.

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.

I Was A Soldier In Wwii. The Last Couple Of Months Of The War I Was Actually In Combat.

Everything Starts With Writing.

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.

If Presidents Can't Do It To Their Wives, They Do It To Their Country.

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.

You're Always A Little Disappointing In Person Because You Can't Be The Edited Essence Of Yourself.

There's Not Enough Bad Taste! I Love Bad Taste! I Live For Bad Taste! I Am The Spokesman For Bad Taste!

I Don't Have A Mission. I Don't Have A Torch To Burn.

Well, Just Being Stupid And Politically Incorrect Doesn't Work. You Can Be Politically Incorrect If You're Smart.

Bad Taste Is Simply Saying The Truth Before It Should Be Said.

Funny Inspirational

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."

Some Critics Are Emotionally Desiccated, Personally About As Attractive As A Year-old Peach In A Single Girl's Refrigerator.

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.

If You're Alive, Make A Lot Of Noise, Because Life Is The Very Opposite Of Death.

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.

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