Carl Reiner Quotes

Id like to acknowledge three people who early on knew Mel Brooks was one of the funniest people in the world: Sid Caesar, me, and Mel Brooks.

Lust is easy. Love is hard. Life is most important.

I'm a charming coward; I fight with words.

When you denigrate people, they have two ways to fight back - with their fists and guns, or their mouths. And mouths are seemingly the easiest way to not get hit back. If people are laughing, they're not going to hit you.

Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow. ~Swedish Proverb Lust is easy. Love is hard. Like is most important.

People have a comic bent or an angularity to their thinking, and those are the people who make jokes. And it's usually people who were in an environment, when they were young, where jokes were at a premium, or at least considered important to a life. My parents always listened to the comedy radio shows, we went to the comedy movies, and my parents appreciated comedy. So kids listen and follow what their parents like.

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.

I'm not a believer, I call myself an atheist. It was man who invented God. I once wrote that there are 15 things I know about God, and one is that he is allergic to shellfish. There are far too many commandments and you really only need one: Do not hurt anybody.

A fellow who has a funny bone can learn to hone his skills, but I don't think you can develop a funny bone - you either have it or you don't. And by the way - when you get it, we don't know it.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

I am an atheist. I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us.

An attitude will give you heft.

Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do. You may be a fool but you're the fool in charge.

Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience.

If you can get a laugh out of a name, you're ahead of the game.

Everybody wants to laugh - you know that. They need to laugh... people need to laugh.

I think that comedy really tells you how it is. The other thing about comedy is that - you don't even know if you're failing in drama, but you do know when you're failing in comedy. When you go to a comedy and you don't hear anybody laughing, you know that you've failed.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh.