Steve Martin quotes:

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  • A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

  • I was raised with 'Laurel and Hardy' and 'I Love Lucy' and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself.

  • An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.

  • I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I'm sure that's some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there's a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.

  • 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.

  • I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it's easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin' man and the loner.

  • Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.

  • Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I'd do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.

  • I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like 'Letterman' and 'The View,' and I've heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven't felt any negativity toward me or my music.

  • You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.

  • I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don't think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.

  • L.A. is only where you live, because otherwise it's just a sprawling mass of everything, and I think if you live in L.A., you get a little network of places you go, and people you see, and when you leave town, you do miss those places and your friends.

  • I never thought about success. I always thought about doing the job at hand. My goal was getting through the show that night.

  • I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.

  • No matter how many times people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself' 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves! You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.

  • It's a mystery to me the way that contemporary art galleries function.

  • I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.

  • Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.

  • What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

  • I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian - or just being in show business, is really more accurate.

  • When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would've had a chance. Because that's where my real heart was.

  • I love technology, and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that's in my head.

  • I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

  • Love is a promise delivered already broken.

  • I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

  • I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.

  • With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you're never off the hook.

  • I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.

  • I don't think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You're always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it'll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it's always meant to be something. So, to me, there's no practicing; there's only editing and publishing or not publishing.

  • I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it.

  • You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.

  • Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

  • A record isn't like a movie - you can get it together pretty fast.

  • Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.

  • Free love, man, Free Love! Which, by the way, was the single greatest concept a young man has ever heard. About three years late, women got wise an my frustration returned to normal levels.

  • I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.

  • His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, "for what?"

  • 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.

  • I love animated films when they are good, because they do bring a lot of emotion and heart that's very difficult to get in a live action film.

  • I do think that animated films have the ability to touch you someplace. There is something about live action movies that is different because we know the characters are real people, so they always stay flawed for us somehow. But animated films touch us in a very clear, uncomplicated place. They have that ability. And an animated character can make an expression in a way humans can't do.

  • I really like the animated film process. It's kind of like doing a play, because you can experiment with it, rewrite it, screen it, go back, then work on it a little bit more. If the joke doesn't work, you can fix it. It's different from a live action movie.

  • Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

  • ...the divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of condominiums.

  • Relationships end, but they don't end your life. But people do often spending more time finding out about failed relationships than finding successful ones.

  • Relationships end, but they don't end your life.

  • The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

  • When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

  • It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched.

  • The bluegrass community... can be very strict. I didn't know if I'd be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly... I felt really welcome.

  • You know, a lot of people come to me and they say, "Steve, how can you be so funny?" There's a secret to it, it's no big deal. Before I go out, I put a slice of bologna in each of my shoes. So when I'm on stage, I feel funny.

  • There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that.

  • 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.

  • Art as an aesthetic principle was supported by thousands of years of discernment and psychic rewards, but art as a commodity was held up by air. The loss of confidence that affected banks and financial instruments was not affecting cherubs, cupids and flattened popes. The objects hadn't changed: what was there before was there after. But a vacancy was created with the clamoring crowds deserted and retrenched.

  • I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.

  • The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.

  • I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

  • My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.

  • ...a young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of soft-shell crabs.

  • It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary...but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

  • I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.

  • A father carries pictures where his money used to be.

  • Being on Twitter is like having a fern.

  • Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

  • There's someone out there for everyone-even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.

  • I believe in eight of the ten commandments. I believe in going to church every Sunday... unless there's a game on.

  • Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.

  • Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.

  • First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

  • I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

  • Rebelliousness really is the province of young people-that kind of iconoclasm.

  • When I die, now don't think that I'm a nut, don't want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut.

  • It was so sweet backstage, you should have seen it: The Teamsters were helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.

  • The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.

  • 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.

  • The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.

  • 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?

  • Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

  • Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

  • How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars

  • In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

  • 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.

  • I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. And it was good. Go ahead and laugh. I think the most important thing I learned was: Never let go of the girl's leg, no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.

  • Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.

  • I didn't worry if a bit got no response, as long as I believed it had enough response to linger.

  • Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience repeats, laughs) Good!

  • Comedy is not pretty.

  • I just don't identify myself with a place. I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town.

  • He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.

  • I will do anything to look like him - except, of course, exercise or eat right.

  • Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.

  • She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care.

  • ...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.

  • If you feel tired midway through, give Neil Patrick Harris a Red Bull and throw some sheet music at him.

  • 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.

  • If there were a silent observer, Mirabelle would be seen as a carefree, happy girl who is preparing for a night on the town. But in reality, these activities are the physical manifestations of her stillness.

  • Tweeting is really only good for one thing - it's just good for tweeting... It is rewarding, because it's just its own reward. It's sort of like heaven.

  • And after his unparsable response, including a passage where he said he was 'blurring the boundaries between a thing and thought,' she said, 'Thank you, I get lost sometimes,' while laying two fingers on his folded arm.

  • Be so good they can't ignore you.

  • You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies."Steve Martin

  • I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.

  • she is nearing forty and not so easily forgiven as when her skin bloomed like roses.

  • If you've got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you've got 71 cents left; But if you've got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you've still got seventeen grand. There's a math lesson for you.

  • I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.

  • It's so beautiful where I am today that it makes me wonder where I am.

  • As a school board we felt it's an unfair expense to families. The lawsuit has a certain logic to it - if you have free public education, you can't put these things on top of it. It defeats the purpose.

  • Always do business as if the person you're doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he's not, you can be pleasantly surprised.

  • If you're studying Geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but Philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.

  • I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

  • introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness

  • Communication has changed so rapidly in the last 20 years, it's almost impossible to predict what might occur even in the next decade. E-mail, which now sends data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light, has replaced primitive forms of communication such as smoke signals, which sent data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light.

  • I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

  • It's not tipping I believe in. It's overtipping.

  • The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful - it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture.

  • I studied with the Maharishi for many years, and really didn't learn that much. But one thing that he taught me, I'll never forget: 'ALWAYS...' no, wait-- 'NEVER...' no, wait, it was 'ALWAYS carry a litter bag in your car. It doesn't take up much room, and if it gets full, you can toss it out the window.'

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