Gene Wilder

“If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?”

“It’s very difficult to appreciate when you’re doing it all the time in the business. The laughter means so much to people. I suppose at all times, but especially these days. It seems that li...”

“The world is not based on fairness. Human beings can rise to fairness, can administer something that makes it fair or just. But that's not God.”

“I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.”

“I'm not a natural writer like, let's say - I'm not talking about Arthur Miller; that's a whole other thing - but let's say Woody Allen. But the more I've written, the more I've found that th...”

“What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it.”

“My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.”

“I live in a small town in Connecticut, and they don't write scripts there, but I get them anyway because my agent is in Los Angeles.”

“I don't want to do 'Hamlet.' I don't want to do Robert Redford roles or Mel Gibson roles or Kevin Costner roles, because I'm not going to be good at them.”

“I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it...”

“I'm going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito.”

“Success is a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. If you can enjoy it, it's wonderful. If it starts eating away at you, and they're waiting for more from me, or what can I do to top this, t...”

“My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the onl...”

“If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the...”

“There seems to be a pattern. I get one good script every two years.”

“Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!”

“Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were s...”

“My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary pe...”

“I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.”

“Mel Brooks is one of the few authentic geniuses working in comedy in America today.”