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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.
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
Family
Clothing
School
Ruin
Work
Brothers
Ruins
Brought
Brother
Food
Went
Clothings
More quotes by Mel Brooks
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
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Being brave is being scared and worried and still doing it [what you do]. Because if you're just a wacko, a mashugana, a crazy guy, then you're not brave, your nuts!
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My favorite expression is: When you go up to the bell, ring it ? or don't go up to the bell.
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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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I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.
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Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together.
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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.
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I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.
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As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
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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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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.
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Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.
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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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The audience. They see the name Mel Brooks, they want something really funny. They don't want to be moved they don't want to be taught any lessons. [...] I get more letters for Twelve Chairs and Life Stinks than I get from any other movies, because people actually agree with the philosophy, or were moved, or they love the movie.
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It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.
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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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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.
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Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.
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I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
Mel Brooks
