Steve Martin Quotes
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I would like a wine. The purpose of the wine is to get me drunk. A bad wine will get me as drunk as a good wine. I would like the good wine. And since the result is the same no matter which wine I drink, I'd like to pay the bad wine price.
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Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
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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.
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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 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.
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I didn't come from a wealthy family. I had no money. Maybe it goes back to naivete which is your greatest asset when you're young. If I was starting in comedy today and if it didn't work the first time, I'd probably quit. But I kept at it, kept at it.
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. . . Now you see . . . they' re not fit for humans . . ." "Put them on me.
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An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
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introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness
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I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
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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.
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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.
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I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.
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Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.
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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.
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Mirabelle is not affected by a man’s failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place.
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I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while.
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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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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.
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Unlike Ray Porter, his love is fearless and without reservation.
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I choose a project based on whether it feels worthwhile working on when it comes to me. But secondly I choose it if it sounds like fun. Projects are determined by just how they strike me at the moment, as they have done throughout my whole life.
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As a human being on Earth, you can't imagine friendship not being important in some other solar system or some other planet, or some other context of beings that are conscious. We even see it in animals. It is important for people on Earth to reach out or reach into someone.
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It's funny that some ideas start with a little "What if?" and then suddenly you're spending a million dollars to shoot the scene and hoping that it works.
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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?