Steve Martin Quotes
Comedian
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
Love is a promise delivered already broken.
I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.
You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
When your hobbies get in the way of your work - that's OK; but when your hobbies get in the way of themselves... well.
Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
I like the idea that one thing leads to another. You can tweet something completely innocuous, and then find yourself going off on a tangent that's inspired by a response.
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that.
I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it's easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin' man and the loner.
It's a mystery to me the way that contemporary art galleries function.
What is a movie star? A movie star is many things. They can be tall, short, thin, or skinny. They can be Democrats... or skinny.
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.
I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.
What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like 'Letterman' and 'The View,' and I've heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven't felt any negativity toward me or my music.
I don't think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You're always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it'll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it's always meant to be something. So, to me, there's no practicing; there's only editing and publishing or not publishing.
I've always believed that there are funny people everywhere, but they're just not comedians. In fact, some of my best comedic inspirations were not professional entertainers.
I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.
What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
I was reading an article in the 'New York Times;' it talked about being in the zone, and being in the zone you're so focused that time ceases to exist. It's when you think, 'Oh, I've been doing this for five hours and didn't even know it.' It's the difference between hard work and going, '12 o'clock, not moving.'
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.
Well, excuuuuuse me!
I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was... an arctic wilderness.
The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don't think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
I'm enamored with the art world.
I would get records by Earl Scruggs... I would tune my banjo down and I'd pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking... And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.
I just wanted to be in show business. I didn't care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.
Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I'd do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.
Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.
Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you're never off the hook.
I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex, you know, in art. There's a lot of naked women and men, and there's intrigue, there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian - or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
I was raised with 'Laurel and Hardy' and 'I Love Lucy' and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself.
'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
I never thought about success. I always thought about doing the job at hand. My goal was getting through the show that night.
I've run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over. I've had that happen to me, and I've seen it happen to other people. I find it fascinating.
The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.
I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I'm sure that's some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there's a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.
I wish I could do a lot of things different. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I'd go, 'Okay, I'll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.' Really. But I've made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?
I first thought maybe I'd do a banjo presentation record, where I'd play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.
Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role... I've had people come up to me and say, 'We want to remake 'The Jerk' with so and so.' And I say, 'Fine.' It just doesn't bother me. It's an honor actually.
I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.
I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.
I like all kinds of music. I listen to Abigail Washburn, the Punch Brothers, and Marc Johnson, the great clawhammer player. I also listen a lot to Sirius Radio, there's a lot of bluegrass there.
I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn't turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.
Nothing I do is done by popular demand.
I don't like to look back, and I'm always worried about the next thing rather than resting on the laurels or the degradations of the last thing.
The bluegrass community... can be very strict. I didn't know if I'd be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly... I felt really welcome.
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
I love technology, and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.
I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.
Tweeting is really only good for one thing - it's just good for tweeting... It is rewarding, because it's just its own reward. It's sort of like heaven.
Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would've had a chance. Because that's where my real heart was.
I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.
I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.
When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
No matter how many times people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself' 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves! You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it.
Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.
L.A. is only where you live, because otherwise it's just a sprawling mass of everything, and I think if you live in L.A., you get a little network of places you go, and people you see, and when you leave town, you do miss those places and your friends.
I think when I was young, let's call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That's really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.
I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that's in my head.
Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
A record isn't like a movie - you can get it together pretty fast.
When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.
I love comedy. That's what got me into the arts. I don't even know how to categorize myself anymore.