Steve Martin Quotes
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Awards mean nothing to comedians. What matters is the audience, how you're doing - artistically, for the most part - at that moment.
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There's a big difference between the National Book Awards and the Academy Awards. At the Academy Awards you can feel the greed and envy and ego. Whereas the National Book Awards are in New York.
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Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.
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She was feeling her bohemian oats.
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You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases.
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I think probably the most difficult challenge was just the climb and rise in show business because I went through my entire twenties with some success as a comedy writer but not much as a performer. And you have to be kind of informed and naive at the same time.
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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.
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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.
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How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?
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I believe in eight of the ten commandments. I believe in going to church every Sunday... unless there's a game on.
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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.
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You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
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I take editing seriously. It's a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can't wait to get back their notes and see what they've said. I don't criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it's just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.
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Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
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Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.
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I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
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My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.
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I'm trying to think of other ones. Oh, yeah, I'd say - somebody would buy something and we'd say, and because you are our hundredth customer today, you get a free paperback.
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If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.
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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.
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I couldn't see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, "I am Picasso." And I said, "Well, so what?
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The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that's when I first started using verbs.
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Be so good they can't ignore you.
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Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.