243 Quotes by Mel Brooks

  • Author Mel Brooks
  • Quote

    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.

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    I don’t think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    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.

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    You got to be brave. If you feel something, you’ve really got to risk it.

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    My liveliness is based on an incredible fear of death. In order to keep death at bay, I do a lot of “Yah! Yah! Yah!” And death says, “All right. He’s too noisy and busy. I’ll wait for someone who’s sitting quietly, half asleep.”

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

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    If you’re alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    An egg cream can do anything. An egg cream to a Brooklyn Jew is like water to an Arab. A Jew will kill for an egg cream. It’s the Jewish malmsey.

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  • Author Mel Brooks
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    Directing is a terrible, anxious process. It’s all collaboration, and if you have a dream, it’s diluted very quickly by the slightest ineptness in any of your collaborators. They’re supposed to help you, but too often they help you into your grave.

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