"[explaining that Paul Revere was Anti-Semitic] He was scared they were moving into the neighborhood. "They're coming, they're coming. The Yiddish, they're coming""

"To me, tragedy is if I'll cut my finger, that's tragedy...Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die."

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

"As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes."

"Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor."

"I was in the middle of shooting the last few weeks of Blazing Saddles somewhere in the Antelope Valley, and Gene Wilder and I were having a cup of coffee and he said, I have this idea that there could be another "Frankenstein." I said not another — we've had the son of, the cousin of, the brother-in-law, we don't need another Frankenstein. His idea was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever. He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, "That's funny.""

"Who's the dummy writing this show?!"

"All the apprehensions that surface in Brooks's comedy have the same eventual source: a fear — or, to put it more positively, a hatred — of death."

"Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle — a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values."

"Mel Brooks has all the consistency of Spike Milligan, the subtle self-censorship of Benny Hill, and the human warmth of Bob Monkhouse. It's a good job he has the brassneck and occasional brainstorms of Mel Brooks or he would be a monster."