Quote

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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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
Half
Asleep
Fear
Incredible
Death
Busy
Keep
Wait
Order
Based
Someone
Sitting
Liveliness
Right
Says
Noisy
Waiting
Quietly

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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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.
Mel Brooks
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If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.
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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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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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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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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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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Don’t be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!
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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If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
Mel Brooks
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I've been taught ever since I was a kid that sex is filthy and forbidden, and that's the way I think it should be. The filthier and more forbidden it is, the more exciting it is.
Mel Brooks
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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.
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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You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
Mel Brooks
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Humor is just another defense against the universe.
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 love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.
Mel Brooks
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Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
Mel Brooks