Mel Brooks Quotes

Madame Defarge: And now, let us end this meeting on a high note. [proceeds to sing a sharp high note, followed by the rest of the revolutionaries]

Sheriff Bart: Good mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'?
Old Woman: Up yours, nigger!
Jim "The Waco Kid": [consoling Bart afterwards]: What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers … these are people of the land … the common clay of the New West. You know – morons.

We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Carl was an immediate and intuitive foil and partner, feeding off my energy and adding to it. I once took Scotch tape and attached my nose to my cheek, my lower lip to my chin, and an eyebrow to my forehead. I looked cruelly disfigured. I burst into the writers’ room, and Carl immediately nurtured the bit: Carl: How did it happen? Who did that to you? Mel: The Nazis! They did it to me. Threw me in a ditch and did it! Carl: You mean they beat you? Disfigured you? Mel: Oh no. They took Scotch tape and stuck it all over my face. Carl broke up and hit the floor, clutching his belly and laughing like crazy. For me that was a home run. Anytime I could make Carl laugh, I knew I had a winner.

As long as the world keeps spinning, people are going to be dizzy and confused.

Robin Hood: Watch my back!
Achoo: Yo' back just got punched twice.

I always thought a rich lie is better than a poor truth:

But let’s get back to Melvin Kaminsky.

[On Churchill's Accent] "Ve must conquer da Narjies!" Now, we were fighting and killing Nazis. We all left and went looking for Narjies!

The movie may be slapstick, but it is not slapdash. It has been conceived and completed as a coherent whole, done in luminously perfect black and white. Everything, most particularly the music, is poignantly faithful to the spirit of old times…. There are Vaudeville jokes that may well be older than Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself…but they are spaced along a carefully developed story line which is executed by a team of hugely talented comic actors rather than one-lining comics.

In every classic comedy duo, from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to Martin and Lewis, in order for the exchange to work, the quality of the straight man had to be as dynamic as that of the funny guy. Carl was the best at this. I

Blinkin Aaahhhh, you lost your arms in battle, but you grew some nice boobs (Blinkin gropes the Venus De Milo statue left behind after creditors take away Loxley Castle)

King Richard: From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as...'Johns'!

Tomás de Torquemada: It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull.

I’ve worked with many great people in my life, but there will never be another Carl Reiner.