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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.

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
Hard
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Always
Wind
Like
Talent
Neuroses
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Small
Diminishes
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Bigs
Diminish
Easy
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More quotes by Mel Brooks

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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.
Mel Brooks
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I make people laugh for a living. I believe I can say objectively that what I do I do as well as anybody. Just say I'm one of the best broken field runners that ever lived. For 35 years I was a cult hero, an underground funny.
Mel Brooks
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If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.
Mel Brooks
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
Mel Brooks
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Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.
Mel Brooks
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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 don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?
Mel Brooks
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My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head.
Mel Brooks
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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.
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 was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.
Mel Brooks
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I'm married to a beautiful and talented woman who can lift your spirits just by looking at you.
Mel Brooks
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The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
Mel Brooks
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I'm still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.
Mel Brooks
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Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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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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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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Ill just say whats in my heart: Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.
Mel Brooks
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We rest our case on the production numbers.
Mel Brooks