Albert Brooks Quotes

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.

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

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.

Getting older is a lot of fun. Right up there with chewing glass or putting your hand in a blender.

Relaxation is the absence of worry.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It won't be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.

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

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

I've seen the future! It's a bald-headed man from New York!

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.

Donald Trump announces this morning that he will run for president.

His hair will announce on Friday.

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.

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

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

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.

Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy.

Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch.

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.

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 guess 'The Player' was a pretty good L.

A. movie. And 'Chinatown.' Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.

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

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

Acceptance is going to a restaurant where the salad's not great, but the steak is fine.

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

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

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

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.

There's nothing funny about flying to Houston.

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

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.

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

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

Film is the cheapest part of the movie making process.

The expense is the 100-man crew and the financing and everything.

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.

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

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

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.

Twitter, to me, works if you're funny.

Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.

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

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.

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.

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.