Mel Brooks

"Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance."

"A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan."

"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."

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

"Immortality is a by-product of good work."

"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."