Quotes

I'm a charming coward; I fight with words.

Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do. You may be the fool but you're the fool in charge.

[on Steve Martin] He's one of my favorite people in the world because he's a cool cat. He looks like an accountant, but he is one of the most tangential thinkers. He thinks in a way that nobody else thinks. He has a brilliant mind, putting things together that don't go together, and make you laugh. He's one of the great creative forces we have today.

[on Sid Caesar] He was a saxophonist but had a sense of memory - where you pick up something and mime it. We wanted to do a funny sketch with it. Sid pretended to open up a jar of olives in his hand. So, without knowing it, he screwed the lid back on and put it down on the floor. That's the greatest sense of memory I've ever seen.

[on Mel Brooks as The 2000 Year Old Man] I always knew if I threw a question to Mel he could come up with something. I learned a long time ago that if you can corner a genius comedy brain in panic, you're going to get something extraordinary.

[on the writers' room in Your Show of Shows (1950), when he was only a performer] I became a writer because of that room. I'd say something and somebody would yell: What do you know? You're not a writer. So I became a writer.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have been hated and found.

Don't let anyone bully you unless they are a licensed bully.

Walk a mile in a man's shoes before making an offer to buy them.