Steve Martin Quotes
- All Quotes
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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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I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.
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I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
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I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
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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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When you're reaching for a star, there's a long way to fall.
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I'm the leader of the platoon and I run gambling and lotteries, dances and I sell beer illegally. I'm a con man and I'm thoroughly lovable.
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Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
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I've put an umbrella in my mouth and opened it. I sat in a lemon-meringue pie. I've done terrible things to my dog with a fork.
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The streets of L.A. undulate over short hills as though a finger is poking the landscape from underneath ... laid over this crosshatch are streets meandering on the diagonal creating a multitude of ways to get from one place to another by traveling along the hypotenuse. These are the avenues of the tryst which enable Acting Student A to travel the eighteen miles across town to Acting Student B's garage apartment in nine minutes flat after a hot-blooded phone call at midnight.
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I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head...
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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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Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.
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Be so good they can't ignore you.
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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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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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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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Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.
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Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.
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I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
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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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It's horrible for someone to listen to someone learning any instrument - when I was first learning the banjo, I used to have to go out and sit in the car, and even in the summertime I'd have to roll up the windows. Because you just couldn't practice a banjo or a fiddle with other people around. Unless they're being paid.
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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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You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.