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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Mel Brooks

Image
In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.
Mel Brooks
Image
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.
Mel Brooks
Image
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
Image
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!'
Mel Brooks
Image
My favorite expression is: When you go up to the bell, ring it ? or don't go up to the bell.
Mel Brooks
Image
As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
Mel Brooks
Image
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.
Mel Brooks
Image
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
Mel Brooks
Image
You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
Mel Brooks
Image
Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.
Mel Brooks
Image
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
Mel Brooks
Image
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.
Mel Brooks
Image
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
Image
Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.
Mel Brooks
Image
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
Image
Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!
Mel Brooks
Image
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
Image
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.
Mel Brooks
Image
But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.
Mel Brooks
Image
My mother is very short - four-eleven. She could walk under tables and never hit her head.
Mel Brooks