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.
— Mel Brooks
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 loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.
I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.
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.
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.
It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.
I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.
A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.
Immortality is a by-product of good work.
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.
If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.
If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.
Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
We rest our case on the production numbers.
I only direct in self-defense.
You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
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.
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.
There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.
Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.
No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.
I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.
But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.
A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.
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'.
Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.
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.
If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.
Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
He who hesitates is poor.
Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.
I wish I was better looking.
If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.
I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage.
I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.
My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.
I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.
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.
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.
You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.
I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.
Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
