Steve Martin Quotes
- All Quotes
-
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
-
You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.
-
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.
-
You know, you're really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.
-
I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.
-
My problem is that I don't get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure.
-
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.
-
In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I'd meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I'd wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.
-
I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.
-
I just respected comedians whether they were or they weren't, from, you know, new or old.
-
He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.
-
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
-
I was always very shy but as I get older I think, What am I being shy for? You just grow weary of your own hang-ups.
-
I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.
-
A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
-
You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.
-
Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.
-
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
-
A remarkable memoir that's packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness.
-
I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up her dress.
-
At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.
-
I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.
-
A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said "Be so good that they can't ignore you." She thought I was being flip but it's true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me.
-
she is nearing forty and not so easily forgiven as when her skin bloomed like roses.