Mel Brooks Quotes

I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.

Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.

Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.

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

When I was a little kid, if somebody said they were thirty-five, I'd say "Oooh, they're going to die soon". But as I get older it doesn't mean a thing. You mustn't ever give in. Never give in to thinking you're old, because you're never old. Your mind, and I tell you this and listen to me carefully, your mind is never, ever old, it's eternally young.

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

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

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

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

Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.

With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.

Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.

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

Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.

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

Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.

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.

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.

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!

All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.

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

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.