Albert Brooks Quotations

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.

What's interesting about books that take place in the future, even twenty years in the future, is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future, just like there is now.

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

I'm not a big fan of the post-Armageddon stories, where Denzel Washington is walking around in a torn coat.

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.

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

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.

Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It wont be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that I've always done 'less is more.'

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.

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.

You know what it is, the reason so many 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds are saying 'Drive' is their favorite movie is that 'Drive' is a 90-minute trip into what a lot of seventies filmmaking was. It encapsulates the best of a certain kind of style, and a style that a lot of people haven't seen before, with the music and the way it's edited.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Twitter, to me, works if you're funny. Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.

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.

Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.

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

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

Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'

How many people didn't get a part who would have been better than the person who got the part? Thousands.

I can't not put humor in a book.

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

I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.

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.

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

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'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.

If I'm going to act in someone's movie, I want the movie to be interesting and be able to get a couple of solid doubles.

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

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

In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.

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

You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.

Nobody will leave any place unless they're forced out. That's the nature of humans. Once you're there, you're there. I've never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.

By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck, it's nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When we spoke, he told me, 'The Newsweek thing has changed the world.' And I said, 'Wasn't it 9/11 that changed the world?' But Michael said he just didn't want to take a chance.

if we actually find advanced life on another planet whether they'll be as obsessed with their own genitals as we are.

I was allowed to film in the biggest mosque in India and when I told the imam the plot of the movie he started to laugh,

It's fear. Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything. Real feeling, true happiness, real joy, they can't get through that fog. But you lift it and buddy you're in for the ride of your life.

What naturally stops you making the film is there is no more money in the budget. That's really what it is. If you had an unlimited budget, if you were a billionaire and you financed your own movies, then you can either date, because you can sit in an editing room for six years, like Howard Hughes, and never finish anything.

You make friends with older people and you always feel young no matter what.

Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?

So I think if you're happy with your brain, you're powerful.

When you improvise on the spot, people are very reluctant to have soft moments or quiet moments or sad moments because they're trying to fill up the spaces. So they always go towards, "How come you're late?! You're supposed to have my shirt ready! You call this a dry cleaner?!" That's what happens. That's why improvising on the spot gets very dicey.

Relaxation is the absence of worry.

I've always enjoyed stories that take place in the future but my one disappointment was that the future books described never came. We're not on other planets, there are no flying cars, and the only robots we have in our homes just sweep the floor. So I wanted to write about a future that I thought could really happen. People ask me when I tell them the title of the book, 'Are we all dead?' The good news is, no. We're still here. And I even think the future in my book is strangely hopeful, although I'm sure there will be people who strongly disagree.

For the most part, improvising while cameras are rolling is very difficult. 99% of people you should never ask to do that, because they're under pressure, the clock is running, 80 people are staring at you...it's always unnatural.

I don't know that I can define fear. But one of the sources of fear is holding up some sort of model life that doesn't exist and feeling like you're far away from it.

I don't want to get close to people who have secrets that I don't know about.

Regrets are stupid; they don't mean anything and they don't add up to anything.

I've always felt like I work in a small little area that doesn't represent anything like the rest of society.

Don't worry, and don't kick yourself forever. Just take the opportunities when they come.

Your spouse should be just attractive enough to turn you on. Anything more is trouble.

Donald Trump announces this morning that he will run for president. His hair will announce on Friday.

Starting to drink now in preparation for New Years. No more last minute stuff like Christmas.

You always got to be happy when somebody likes what you do. It's stupid not to be happy.

Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch.

You can equate acting to a tennis game: When you're playing one of the best, you get better.

I'm a big consumer of news and I have my six newspaper sites booked. And what I like bout Twitter is it's almost, it allows me to make a comment about something that's just on my mind.

There's nothing funny about flying to Houston.

Film is the cheapest part of the movie making process. The expense is the 100-man crew and the financing and everything.

I have children. I have a family to support. But I really could live in a one-room apartment, as long as the television worked. I never needed anything. Just a comfortable chair and I'm fine.

Art and resistance are great together. That's what art's made for. Look at Vincent van Gogh: He didn't cut off his ear because he was selling well.

In the beginning of any career, in every job, people are always forcing you to the middle.

I don't experience basic human emotions. It's not my thing.

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.

I've never been disappointed, because I've never given somebody I liked that much power.

The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, It's a stormy night. Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: It's a calm night. Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

I'm not a person who I ever thought would do well with divorce. Not that it can't happen. I just didn't want that. So I waited a long time to meet the right person. Then I finally met someone that I was willing to be divorced from.

I never wanted to be a director.

I like movies about failing.

I cast unusual people in my movies.

Twitter is the Devil's playground.

A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!

If anything happens to me, tell every woman I've ever gone with I was talking about her at the end. That way, they'll have to reevaluate me.

The whole world is tense. Everybody gets the international news. Theres been no American comedy at all that even remotely addresses the subject in any way. My goal isnt to solve the worlds problems. My character wasnt even able to do his assignment. But the premise of wanting to find out about somebody -- other than the stuff that the CIA will tell you -- theres no hope unless we do that.