Mel Brooks

Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

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.

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.

Mad About You' was very fun.

You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.

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.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.