Albert Brooks Quotes

Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.

If I'm going to act in someone's movie, I want the movie to be interesting and be able to get a couple of solid doubles.

I don't know that I can define fear. But one of the sources of fear is holding up some sort of model life that doesn't exist and feeling like you're far away from it.

Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It won't be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.

I like movies about failing.

You always got to be happy when somebody likes what you do. It's stupid not to be happy.

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing ... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance ... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.

When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up.

I take anything other than 'you big pig!' as a compliment.

You make friends with older people and you always feel young no matter what.

As an actor, if you're just sitting and staring and you don't know who you are in your own mind, it's vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.

I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.

Your spouse should be just attractive enough to turn you on. Anything more is trouble.

The world really changed after 9/11, not just in the tragic way, but in every way. So it took me a couple of years to even understand how my art form I could process any of this. When the world changed, eliciting laughter with subjects that were funny to me before 9/11 just didnt seem good enough.

You can equate acting to a tennis game: When you're playing one of the best, you get better.

I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'

It's fear. Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything. Real feeling, true happiness, real joy, they can't get through that fog. But you lift it and buddy you're in for the ride of your life.

If you paint, write, do mosaics, knit - if it's solving that part of your brain saying, 'I need to do this,' you've won.

Nobody will leave any place unless they're forced out. That's the nature of humans. Once you're there, you're there. I've never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.

A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!

It's interesting when you're part of a group - the Jews, to be exact - that the world has had such problems with.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

Even if you didn't see the movie, you'd see two words you'd never seen put together before - comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly - it's the least offensive word in our language.

If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, It's a stormy night. Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: It's a calm night. Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.

One of the things I like about a character: I always think it's fascinating when a character can turn on a dime and go from one emotion to another. I like watching that.

I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that ... I've always done 'less is more.'

If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.

Getting older is a lot of fun. Right up there with chewing glass or putting your hand in a blender.

In the beginning of any career, in every job, people are always forcing you to the middle.

Most entertainment is trying to get you. It's tested, like toothpaste.

Once you sign on as an actor, you know, you don't go to the editing room, you don't see how they cut, you don't see how they score, you don't see how they cast the rest of the movie.

You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen.

If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money.

I've done performances in movies that I was immensely proud of and the movies didn't take off like a rocket at Cape Canaveral, it didn't take off.

I don't want to get close to people who have secrets that I don't know about.

I'm not a big fan of the post-Armageddon stories, where Denzel Washington is walking around in a torn coat.

When I was younger, I wasn't concentrating on good days. I was managing a career and trying to have a good year. It would always 'lead' to something, which never leads to anything except death, where everything leads to. And then as I got older, and then I had my kids and everything, I began to appreciate a great Wednesday.

I was in Kashmir last weekend. Went to visit one of my sweaters.

I don't want to be the one to break it to you, but the future ain't that funny.

I've always felt like I work in a small little area that doesn't represent anything like the rest of society.

Starting to drink now in preparation for New Years. No more last minute stuff like Christmas.

I guess 'The Player' was a pretty good L.A. movie. And 'Chinatown.' Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.

There's nothing funny about flying to Houston.

I don't experience basic human emotions. It's not my thing.

Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.

Twitter, to me, works if you're funny. Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.

By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck, it's nothing.

I cast unusual people in my movies.

I'd still like to see 'Survivor' minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business - I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else's foot.

I've always enjoyed stories that take place in the future but my one disappointment was that the future books described never came. We're not on other planets, there are no flying cars, and the only robots we have in our homes just sweep the floor. So I wanted to write about a future that I thought could really happen. People ask me when I tell them the title of the book, 'Are we all dead?' The good news is, no. We're still here. And I even think the future in my book is strangely hopeful, although I'm sure there will be people who strongly disagree.

I'm a big consumer of news and I have my six newspaper sites booked. And what I like bout Twitter is it's almost, it allows me to make a comment about something that's just on my mind.

Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you're acting in it. And I'm inherently lazy.

I've seen the future! It's a bald-headed man from New York!

I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it.

Don't worry, and don't kick yourself forever. Just take the opportunities when they come.

The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable.

I can't not put humor in a book.

I've always liked to think ahead. Not stupid-far ahead. A hundred years doesn't interest me. But 20 years interests me, and more for what happens to humans as opposed to things.

All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.

Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.

You never do a movie and not want it to work. You accept whatever it is. You have to, but nobody in their right mind would not want the movie to be getting talked about at the end of the year.

The whole world is tense. Everybody gets the international news. Theres been no American comedy at all that even remotely addresses the subject in any way. My goal isnt to solve the worlds problems. My character wasnt even able to do his assignment. But the premise of wanting to find out about somebody
other than the stuff that the CIA will tell you
theres no hope unless we do that.

I'm a member of the Academy, but I don't know who all the other Academy members are. It's not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.

Film is the cheapest part of the movie making process. The expense is the 100-man crew and the financing and everything.

Donald Trump announces this morning that he will run for president. His hair will announce on Friday.

I'm a strong fellow.

I, sort of, got into comedy accidentally, and it got bigger than I wanted it to.

When you use more than 3-5% of your brain, you don't want to be on Earth!"
-Bob Diamond, Interdimensional Attorney, from the Albert Brooks' movie, Defending Your Life

I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you're younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That's what people do. And you can't really fix anything. It shouldn't be a massive difficult thing every day. Life's difficult enough.