Top 162 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Brooks

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

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.

Even in my comedies, I don't take anger as a joke. I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it. 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.

My dad died right after performing at the Friars' roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I have that tape somewhere. There's still a lot of good jokes in there. I mean, that was 1958.

I made my living in comedy, but I'm not a silly person. I've got all these sides to me. Even in my movies that I've written myself, the characters sometimes border on great anger or nutsiness or other kinds of behavior. I'm not just doing fart jokes for two hours.

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

When I started out, I tried out all my stuff on national television. There were no comedy clubs, but even if there were, I don't think I would have gone to them. I used to do stuff in the bathroom, and then I'd drive down to NBC and do it on 'The Golddiggers' with Dean Martin.

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.

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.

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.

It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than by 60 million for something you're not.

My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.

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 can't not put humor in a book.

Twitter is the Devil's playground.

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 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.

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.

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

I come from the place where I am thinking 'I have put my blood on the pages.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't know how, where, and why the idea for 'Defending Your Life' began; the idea had been bouncing around for a while. Stories like that sort of have to bounce. They don't come out of nowhere. I went through my own period of life with sort of everything turning upside down, and wondering, 'Why is it this way?'

You know what I've always wanted to do? I've always wanted to put a lung in a suitcase and send it through an airport security check. In effect, the guard would be looking at an X-ray of a lung.

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 wrote this book, '2030,' and I was careful in the book not to overdo the future because I don't think it comes that fast.

'Drive' came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, 'You've always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.' My ears just perked up.

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.

'Finding Nemo' has spawned so many sort of emotions over the years. I don't even know that you could really understand exactly what parents and kids are seeing in it, but they can see a lot of different stuff.

I never wanted to be a director.

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.

If you don't succeed on your own ground, then there's no reason to succeed. Unless, of course, you really want a boat. If you're a person who feels that with a yacht, everything will be all right, then you should do whatever you have to and get the yacht.

I like movies about failing.

I'm not interesting enough on my own that you'd want to see a film about me.

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.

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

When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.

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

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.

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

I'm not Elvis. I don't get chased by paparazzi.

I studied acting at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh because I figured a good comedian certainly could act.

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

This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she's limping, and she's still living, but she doesn't look at me like she knows. She's not thinking what I'm thinking. It's a cruel trick that we all know the ending.

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.

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

I'm a strong fellow.

There's always the standard six people you can hire that have played all these villains in Hollywood. Instinctively, when they come on screen, you know what's going to happen. You don't know the story, but you know what they do.

I've been to many funerals of funny people, and they're some of the funniest days you'll ever have, because the emotions run high.

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

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

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 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?'

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.

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 attempt to create a form of seriocomic entertainment to either delight, enlighten, or disgust, whichever you'd like. In terms of making motion pictures, I write and direct and act. I guess you'd say I'm a filmmaker.

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