“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
— Steve Martin
“Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
“It’s pain that changes our lives.”
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
“Be undeniably good.”
“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.”
“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”
“Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.”
“The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.”
“Or is it that I think too much?”
“The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.”
“I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.”
“Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”
“The operation was a success, but I’m afraid the doctor is dead.”
“I’ve heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.”
“I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.”
“I saw the movie, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and was surprised because I didn’t see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they’re crouching and hidden.”
“No art comes from the conscious mind.”
“I don’t really manage my time. I really just wait until I’m inspired to do something. And when I’m inspired to do something, it just happens.”
“I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.”
“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.”
“How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars.”
“It’s not the size of the nose that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.”
“Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.”
“All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.”
“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.”
“As much as I remember, I just thought, I want to sing a song that starts normal and ends crazy.”
“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”
“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 will do anything to look like him – except, of course, exercise or eat right.”
“There’s someone out there for everyone-even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.”
“I’m not a human being. I’m despicable and disgusting – but that’s where the money is.”
“Love is a promise delivered already broken.”
“You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.”
“Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.”
“A father carries pictures where his money used to be.”
“I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”
“My problem is that I don’t get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure.”
“Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.”
“So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.”
“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.”
“She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn’t, because he didn’t care.”
“Nothing I do is done by popular demand.”
“How many people have never raised their hand before?”
“I was deeply unhappy, but I didn’t know it because I was so happy all the time.”
“I’m always looking for something to engage my imagination and take me on a little mental voyage. I just want a new topic in my life.”
“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.”
“I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.”
“I have no fear, no fear at all. I wake up, and I have no fear. I go to bed without fear. Fear, fear, fear, fear. Yes, ‘fear’ is a word that is not in my vocabulary.”
“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.”
“I’ve decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn’t getting enough tar.”
“Teaching is a form of show business.”
“Women have choices, and men have responsibilities.”
“I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?”
“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.”
“The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that’s when I first started using verbs.”
“I cannot smell mothballs because it’s so difficult to get their little legs apart.”
“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.”
“If I screw up raising my kids, nothing I achieve will matter much.”
“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.”
“There are few takers for the quiet heart.”
“Home to me is when someone comes up to me and says, “Can I get a selfie?” No. It’s where your wife and your family are. It’s the emotional place where you feel like you’re not away from it.”
“You can’t really conduct your life by one or two phrases.”
“An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.”
“When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.”
“I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything anymore if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.”
“I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition.”
“A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”
“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.”
“She was feeling her bohemian oats.”
“Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else’s message – but writing is more of an accomplishment.”
“I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I’m working at it.”
“I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.”
“You know when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”
“I think communication is so firsbern.”
“You can’t make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else.”
“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.”
“It’s not tipping I believe in. It’s overtipping.”
“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.”
“To me, torture would be, “I can’t think what to write in the next sentence. I’m stuck.” Torture would be if you didn’t have the next idea.”
“College totally changed my life. It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy.”
“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.”
“Kids like my act because I’m wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there’s a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny.”
“I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.”
“I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.”
“With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.”
“He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The course was more plodding than heroic. I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.”
“We’ve taken what was just once a racetrack and made it a multifaceted gaming destination for the entire region.”
“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.”
“I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.”
“I find animated movies very touching. They reach an audience that’s hard to get with a live-action film.”
“It’s not what you know, it’s what you think you know.”
“A remarkable memoir that’s packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness.”
“With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you have no idea if it’s going to work. And then you get the response. It’s great when it’s good.”
“She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.”
“Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.”
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