I'm still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.

Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.

What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that philosophical treatise about having black beginnings and wanting love to compensate for that, wanting audiences and wanting attention - I say, "Au contraire." Completely opposite. I want the continuation of my mother's incredible love and attention to me.

You want me to admit I'm a four-foot, six-inch freckle-faced person of Jewish extraction? I admit it. All but the extraction. But being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.

My movies were not reaping the kind of emotional rewards that I wanted. I wanted them to be appreciated and they weren't. I didn't want the reviews to say, "Mel Brooks has made another movie," and you get the title somewhere in the second paragraph.

I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.

Nothing is free. You got to pay to be in society. First you start with homework.