Steve Martin Quotes
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The lure in art collecting and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust in paper money: it makes no sense when you really think about it. New artistic images are so vulnerable to opinion that it wouldn't take much more than a whim for a small group of collectors to decide that a contemporary artist was not so wonderful anymore, was so last year.
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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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The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that's when I first started using verbs.
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I was deeply unhappy, but I didn't know it because I was so happy all the time.
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I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.
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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.
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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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A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.
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You know, you're really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.
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A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
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Anyone who's ever worked with Meryl Streep always says the same thing: can that woman act! And what's with all the Hitler memorabilia?
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When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.
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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.
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Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
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Any type of humor can be transferred to the screen, as long as there's clarity. The audience wants to know just what they're supposed to be feeling, when they're supposed to laugh.
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She was feeling her bohemian oats.
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I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
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Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
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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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No art comes from the conscious mind.
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You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases.
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I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up her dress.
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I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.
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I did a lot of things when I first started out. In order to be in show business, I juggled, I did magic tricks, cards tricks and I played the banjo.