Mel Brooks Quotes

I think the best comedy comes from stuff that's based in reality.

The best comedy is based on truth.

I'll see something, and I'll go, 'Oh, wow, that's interesting,' because really, comedy comes from the truth.

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.

The average comedian is kind of an observer looking at everyday things that everyone could relate to and then trying to find the exaggeration in those things.

If you're satirizing something, you're hitting at something that's real and true, and putting it on its head, and we did that with 'Tropic Thunder.'

People say the comedy is so shocking, but if you read newspapers or look around generally - I mean, obviously I'm not writing about all the lovely things that there are, which I do see as well - but there is a lot of outrageousness around, slightly covered up. And obviously, it's fun to take that a little bit further.

Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.

I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

What's fun about comedy is you're pushing things a little further than you would in a drama; you're pushing reality a little bit more.

The best comedy to me - and again, I grew up with comedy since I was a baby, so I've seen it all - is when you exaggerate the truth, like Richard Pryor did, you understand?

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.

It takes intelligence to make real comedy, and it takes a reality base to create all that little stuff I like to do that makes you giggle inside.

Humor is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

More eccentric characters can push pretty far, but if you stay on the side of reality, it's always funnier.

I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation.

I am trying to work out what my taste is, comedy-wise. I look up to stand up comedians who appear to be telling the truth, but I don't mind if they are lying.

When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny.

Comedians are sociologists. We're pointing out stuff that the general public doesn't even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

Comedians in general make their living calling liars on their lies.

Comedy is a reaction to the world, and I think it really helps to be an outsider. I've always been very interested in people's behavior, to the point of being obsessed - seeing what people needed and reading them, I think that's the backbone of comedy.

The truth is really funny. It's uncomfortable sometimes, it's dramatic sometimes, but it's really funny. Life is funny.