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.
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.
Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.
Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl’s refrigerator.
It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.
Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they’re for critics. Critics can’t even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is ‘Let’s swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let’s not mimic death before our time comes! Let’s be wet and noisy!’
I realised that all one really had to do was just observe. Observe and slightly exaggerate, and you had comedy. Instead of creating a mythical premise for a stupid joke, I found playing off truth got the best result.
You’re young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don’t have any dementia or Alzheimer’s, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.
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.
Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.
I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.
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.
There’s an army story in me, and I think there’s a WWII Brooks film somewhere.
Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can’t make you laugh can do that.
One day, God said ‘Let there be prey.’ And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.
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.
There’s not enough bad taste! I LOVE bad taste! I live for bad taste! I am the spokesman for bad taste!
Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.
I’ve always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.
We want to get people laughing; we don’t want to offend anybody.