Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last.

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.

Dont put the sheep on the table.

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.

I met [Gilda Radner] on the first night of filming ... Hanky Panky that Sidney Poitier was directing. And it's funny, I was in costume and makeup - my tuxedo and makeup because I'd done a few shots before she arrived, and she told me later that she cried all the way in, in the car, because she knew that she was going to fall in love with me and want to get married.

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.