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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The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.
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I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.
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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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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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Mel Brooks is one of the few authentic geniuses working in comedy in America today.
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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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I'm an actor, not a clown.
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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've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.
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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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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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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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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 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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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?