Quote

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
Easy
Talents
Find
Discovered
Hard
Combination
Always
Wind
Like
Talent
Neuroses
People
Small
Diminishes
Working
Neurosis
Bigs
Diminish

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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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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Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!
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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.
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I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
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The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated.
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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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Immortality is a by-product of good work.
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No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.
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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.
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I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.
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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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If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.
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I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.
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Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.
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That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
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There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.
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Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.
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