Gene Wilder Quotes
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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.
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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.
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I thought the script was very good, but something was missing. I wanted to come out with a cane, come down slowly, have it stick into one of the bricks, get up, fall over, roll around, and they all laugh and applaud. The director asked, ‘what do you want to do that for?’ I said from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.
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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 so long that I've forgotten what the point was.
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What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?
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I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.
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I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.
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When I'm not working on something, I seem to go through periods of depression. It helps to keep busy.
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Mel Brooks is one of the few authentic geniuses working in comedy in America today.
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I want to do what I can lend my talents to, but I want it to be as a human being and not as a two-dimensional character.
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I feel very Jewish, and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion.
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Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.
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A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'
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I didn't want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor - maybe a comic actor, but a real actor - by real, I mean not a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.
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I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.
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I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.
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If there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail?