Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

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

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

— 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

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

— Mel Brooks

If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a…

— 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…

— 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

Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even…

— 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…

— Mel Brooks

I love spaghetti and sex, sometimes together. My dream of heaven is walking naked through fields of pasta fazool.

— Mel Brooks

Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen.…

— Mel Brooks

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible. The job is to make people laugh. I don't have…

— Mel Brooks

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give…

— Mel Brooks

Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if…

— Mel Brooks

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the…

— Mel Brooks

Humor keeps the elderly rolling along, singing a song. When you laugh, its an involuntary explosion of the lungs. The lungs need…

— 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…

— Mel Brooks

What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that…

— Mel Brooks

Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and…

— Mel Brooks

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…

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

“Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.”

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

I've always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.

— Mel Brooks

These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living…

— Mel Brooks

I've been taught ever since I was a kid that sex is filthy and forbidden, and that's the way I think it…

— Mel Brooks

The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision--it pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.

— Mel Brooks

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn't work. You can be politically incorrect if you're smart.

— 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…

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks

Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.

— Mel Brooks

“Comedy is protest. It's "I beg to differ," if you're fancy, or if you're Jewish, "Hey, listen to this!”

— Mel Brooks

I also try to surround myself with people I love - make a family out of the company. So I tend to…

— Mel Brooks

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

— Mel Brooks