“Well, you know, ‘Spaceballs’ is a weird combination, because it’s a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it’s crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, ‘Star Wars’, and ‘Star Trek’.”

I’m rather secular. I’m basically Jewish. But I think I’m Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.

A lot of music is mathematics. It’s balance.

If presidents can’t do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

We’re all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.

Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.

I don’t believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.

He who hesitates is poor.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

As far as songwriters, I’ve always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.

There’s an army story in me, and I think there’s a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

I know how to make it a great musical. I’ve got to. It’s like I’ve got to see it on stage.

I like Chris Rock. He’s dangerous.

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn’t work. You can be politically incorrect if you’re smart.

A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.

Fairytales are full of impossible tasks.

A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.

If you see a fairy tell her I called.

Fairytales are what you make of them.

We would look with scorn at witch mothers who build towers but not at princes who lust after caged women.

Some girls dream of princes and castles others play with matches.

Every fairytale has its own hell but there’s always heaven in the end.