Quotes from Mel Brooks

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

Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.

We rest our case on the production numbers.

I only direct in self-defense.

If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.

All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it's a sign of security.

I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

'Mad About You' was very fun.

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

I wish I was better looking.

If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.

That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.

Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.

All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.

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

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.

A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity. We're all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.

I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.

There's not enough bad taste! I LOVE bad taste! I live for bad taste! I am the spokesman for bad taste!

I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?

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

There's an army story in me, and I think there's a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

My God, I'd love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, 'Well done, you god-damn genius.'