Mel Brooks Quotes & Sayings

There's not enough bad taste! I LOVE bad taste! I live for bad taste! I am the spokesman for bad taste! — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody. — Mel Brooks

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel. — Mel Brooks

Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl's refrigerator. — Mel Brooks

I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances. — Mel Brooks

Usually when a lot of men get together, it's called a war. — Mel Brooks

There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere. — Mel Brooks

I had low blood sugar, a chemical imbalance, plus the normal nervous breakdown everyone goes through from adolescence to adulthood. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous. — Mel Brooks

Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you. — Mel Brooks

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin. — Mel Brooks

Jewish women are very exciting, as exciting sexually as any other group. Even so, my advice to a young man marrying a Jewish girl would be to have three and a half years of foreplay. Of course, most girls in every group are reserved about getting down to it. They don't usually do it right away. But once they do it, women are bananas. They don't wanna do it, you can't make them do it, there's no way they'll do it - but once they do it, they don't let you alone. — Mel Brooks

I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front. — Mel Brooks

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

You cannot have fun with anything that you don't love or admire or respect. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder. — Mel Brooks

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one. — Mel Brooks

Ill just say whats in my heart: Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. — Mel Brooks

Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin. — Mel Brooks

'Mad About You' was very fun. — Mel Brooks

With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth ... the critic — Mel Brooks

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all. — Mel Brooks

They make us live in the crap, and now they're taking the crap away? No! — Mel Brooks

Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels. — Mel Brooks

I knew it ... I'm surrounded by assholes! — Mel Brooks

Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before. — Mel Brooks

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance. — Mel Brooks

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

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible. — Mel Brooks

Immortality is a by-product of good work. — Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

Now thyself is more important than Know thyself. — Mel Brooks

Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity. — Mel Brooks

In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing. — Mel Brooks

The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you. — Mel Brooks

I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn. — Mel Brooks

I know how to make it a great musical. I've got to. It's like I've got to see it on stage. — Mel Brooks

We rest our case on the production numbers. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you. — Mel Brooks

Do you have a dollar on you? I hate to answer questions for nothing. — Mel Brooks

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan. — Mel Brooks

It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films. — Mel Brooks

You want to be as smart as you can about being stupid. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

The only weapon I've got is comedy — Mel Brooks

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! — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God! — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country. — Mel Brooks

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! — Mel Brooks

The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation ... but I hear that it's coming quickly. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!" — Mel Brooks

Look, I really 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 got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy, colorful and lively. — Mel Brooks

My brothers went to work at 12 and put themselves through school and brought the family out of ruin into food and clothing. — Mel Brooks

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'. — Mel Brooks

I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up. — Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. — Mel Brooks

Could be worse ... could be raining."

- Igor — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — 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. — Mel Brooks

THE 2,000-YEAR-OLD MAN'S SECRETS OF LONGEVITY 1. Don't run for a bus - there'll always be another. 2. Never, ever touch fried food. 3. Stay out of a Ferrari or any other small Italian car. 4. Eat fruit - a nectarine - even a rotten plum is good. — Mel Brooks

I don't know what to say so I'll just say what's in my heart ... badoom, badoom, badoom. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny. — Mel Brooks

I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting. — Mel Brooks

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

My favorite expression is: When you go up to the bell, ring it ? or don't go up to the bell. — Mel Brooks

My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head. — Mel Brooks

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat. — Mel Brooks

We mock the things we are to be. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films. — Mel Brooks

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter. — Mel Brooks

Everything starts with writing. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

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. — Mel Brooks

I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business. — Mel Brooks

My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. — Mel Brooks

It's good to be the king. — Mel Brooks