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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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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
Soapbox
Dictator
Rhetoric
Trade
Stand
Winning
Never

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.
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Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.
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Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
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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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Ill just say whats in my heart: Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.
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You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
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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
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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
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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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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.
Mel Brooks
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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
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I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.
Mel Brooks
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I was adored [as a kid]. I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again. Until I was six, my feet didn't touch the ground. Look at those eyes! That nose! Those lips! That tooth! Get that child away from me, quick! I'll eat him! Giving that up was very difficult later on in life.
Mel Brooks
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We rest our case on the production numbers.
Mel Brooks
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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
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When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.
Mel Brooks
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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
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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
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Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
Mel Brooks