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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

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Look, I Don't Want

Mel Brooks

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Premature Ejaculation

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

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

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.

He Who Hesitates Is Poor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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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 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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Now Thyself Is More Important Than “know Thyself.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Everything Starts With Writing.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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