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

Mel Brooks

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Mel Brooks
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: June 28
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Librettist
Lyricist
Screenwriter
Soldier
Songwriter
Stage Actor
Brooklyn
New York
Melvin Brooks
Melvin Kaminsky
Eleven
Writers
Direct
Anybody
Comedy
Good

More quotes by 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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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.
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But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.
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You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
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My brothers went to work at 12 and put themselves through school and brought the family out of ruin into food and clothing.
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My God, I'd love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, 'Well done, you god-damn genius.'
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When I was a little boy, I thought when I grew up I would talk Yiddish. I thought little kids talked English, but when they became adults, they would talk Yiddish like the adults did. There would be no reason to talk English anymore, because we would have made it.
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Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
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Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen. So if you have a valuable idea, the only way to protect it is to direct it.
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Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
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Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
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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.
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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!'
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Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
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I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
Mel Brooks
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If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
Mel Brooks
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As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin those guys mean a lot to me.
Mel Brooks
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There's not enough bad taste! I LOVE bad taste! I live for bad taste! I am the spokesman for bad taste!
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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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