Steve Martin Quotes
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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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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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With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you're never off the hook.
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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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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 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.
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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 thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.
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No art comes from the conscious mind.
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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 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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In my opening seconds, I would say, "It's great to be here," then move to several other spots on the stage and say, "No, it's great to be here!" I would move again: "No, it's great to be here!
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I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.
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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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introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness
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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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Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
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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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You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases.
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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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You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
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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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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.