Explore Quotes by Gene Wilder

What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it.

I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.

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.

I don't want to do 'Hamlet.' I don't want to do Robert Redford roles or Mel Gibson roles or Kevin Costner roles, because I'm not going to be good at them.

I said something really stupid once. I told a friend that my mother was so beautiful, but my dad was ugly. My dad heard it and just laughed it off, but I felt guilty. It haunted me for years. I should never have said that.

When I'm not working on something, I seem to go through periods of depression. It helps to keep busy.

I'm not a natural writer like, let's say - I'm not talking about Arthur Miller; that's a whole other thing - but let's say Woody Allen. But the more I've written, the more I've found that there is a deep well in me somewhere that wants to express things that I'm not going to find unless I write them myself.

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.

Mel Brooks is one of the few authentic geniuses working in comedy in America today.

My wife and I water color, paint water colors.

I'm stopped by mothers who say, 'Mr. Wilder, what advice would you give to my young boy? He's really talented.'

My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

Sidney Poitier was directing a film called 'Hanky Panky.' And he said, 'Do you want to come with me to New York to see Gilda Radner in 'Lunch Hour' on Broadway? I said, 'I don't need to see her, I love her. I've wanted to write something for her for a long time. So it's OK by me.'

If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh.

I'm not so funny. Gilda was funny. I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while. But she was funny. She spent more time worrying about being liked than anything else.

I've become pretty philosophical about a lot of things, including death. It doesn't get to me.

I don't like giving speeches. It makes me nervous.

Pride is not the worst of sins. In fact, it's one of the most interesting ones.

I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life, and then you call it fate.

I live in a small town in Connecticut, and they don't write scripts there, but I get them anyway because my agent is in Los Angeles.

When you fall in love, and you're very young, you think that that's the love of your life. And maybe it is, but it usually doesn't turn out that way.