All about Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business

by Mel Brooks

Don’t give them what they expect! Give them what they don’t know and what they don’t expect and maybe you’ll get an even bigger explosion of laughter. Failure is vital. It is an incredibly important quotient in the equation of a career. After you wipe away your tears, it’s not a bad experience and under the right circumstances it will make you better, both as a person and as an artist. I think it’s important to fail, especially between the ages of twenty and thirty. Success is like sugar. It’s too good. It’s too sweet. It’s too wonderful and it burns up very quickly. Failure is like corned beef hash. It takes a while to eat. It takes a while to digest. But it stays with you. Failure may not feel good when it happens, but it will always sharpen your mind.

If you don’t get killed in the Army you can learn a lot.

The first thing they told us was that the water was undrinkable. The only safe thing to drink was a Yugoslavian bottled water “kisela voda,” a mild laxative. So I would suggest if you’re going to make a movie in Yugoslavia, don’t forget to bring a lot of toilet paper and a few hundred-watt bulbs. Because when night fell, I think the entire city was lit by two or three thirty-watt bulbs.

Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad if you have a sense of humor.