12 Zero Mostel Quotes

Zero Mostel quotes

1. There's a kind of silliness in the theater about what one contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money... but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I'm not a modest fellow about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn't [the theater] where your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?

2. Mostel: If I appeared there, what if I did an imitation of a butterfly at rest? There is no crime in making anybody laugh. I don't care if you laugh at me. Congressman Jackson: If your interpretation of a butterfly at rest brought any money into the coffers of the Communist Party, you contributed directly to the propaganda effort of the Communist Party. Mostel: Suppose I had the urge to do the butterfly at rest somewhere? Congressman Doyle: Yes, but please, when you have the urge, don't have such an urge to put the butterfly at rest by putting some money in the Communist Party coffers as a result of that urge to put a butterfly at rest.

3. You should have told him (Jewison) to get Topol's son!

4. With kikes like you on the loose, who needs Hitler?

5. Romanian-Jewish cooking has killed more Jews than Hitler.

6. Humor is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.

7. The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.

8. What was Pearl Harbor doing in the Pacific?

9. Comedy is rebellion against that kind of piety which we may call the False Piety...against hypocrisy, against pretense, against falsehood and humbug and bunk and fraud, against false promises and base deceivers...against all evils masquerading as true and good and worthy of respect.

1. I wanted to say something about the universe. There's God, angels, plants... and horseshit.

2. The heart is, truly, the source of love. The proof is that if you remove it from someone, they will almost certainly never love again.

3. When you've got it, flaunt it.