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