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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.

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
Ever
Pens
Even
Gifted
Heart
Page
Mind
Stuck
Way
Pages
Like
Lived
Writer
Didn
Tolstoy

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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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One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.
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Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
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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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Usually when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.
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You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.
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As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin those guys mean a lot to me.
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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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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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Well, you know, 'Spaceballs' is a weird combination, because it's a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it's crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, 'Star Wars', and 'Star Trek'.
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Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When we got to our hotel rooms, mosquitoes as big as George Foreman were waiting for us. They were sitting in armchairs with their legs crossed.
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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.
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Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.
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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 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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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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