But the acting process - create a human being - was real, not only to the audience, but real to me.

My agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, before he became a movie mogul, called me up and said, how about a movie with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman? And I said, well, what makes you think of that? He said because I now handle you and Peter Marty.

To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.

And Mel [Brooks] - you have to understand this important point - he had done "The Producers" for $50,000 over two years, and he didn't make a penny from it. And then he did "The Twelve Chairs" - $50,000 for two more years and didn't make a penny from it. That's four years of work. And then they offered him quite a bit of money to direct "Young Frankenstein," and he took it.

When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.She made me believe that I could make someone laugh.

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

Gene Wilder characters wanted to be calm, but to the great delight of audiences, they rarely succeeded.