Well, you know, 'Spaceballs' is a weird combination, because it's a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it's crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, 'Star Wars', and 'Star Trek'.

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.

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.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

When I was a little kid, if somebody said they were thirty-five, I'd say "Oooh, they're going to die soon". But as I get older it doesn't mean a thing. You mustn't ever give in. Never give in to thinking you're old, because you're never old. Your mind, and I tell you this and listen to me carefully, your mind is never, ever old, it's eternally young.

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.