Quotes from Gene Wilder

I feel alone and safe in public.

My wife and I water color, paint water colors.

Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.

There seems to be a pattern. I get one good script every two years.

The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.

My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it.

My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. 'Forgive me Lord.' For what, I didn't know.

I've become pretty philosophical about a lot of things, including death. It doesn't get to me.

When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.

I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right.

When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.She made me believe that I could make someone laugh.

I found a very diabolical way of making myself suffer - not in the same way [my mother ] was suffering but to prevent me from enjoying my own life.

Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!

The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last.

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?

I'm an actor, not a clown.

I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.

I didn't want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor - maybe a comic actor, but a real actor - by real, I mean not a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.

When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.

I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.

We all grew up on movies with scenes where the actor is lying, and you know he's lying, but he wants to make sure you know it's a lie, and so he overacts and all but winks at you, and everybody in the world except for the girl he's talking to knows he's lying.

I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony.