Top 250 Steve Martin Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I’ve decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn’t getting enough tar.”

— Steve Martin

52. “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.”

— Steve Martin

53. “I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up her dress.”

— Steve Martin

54. “Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.”

— Steve Martin

55. “Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!”

— Steve Martin

56. “If I screw up raising my kids, nothing I achieve will matter much.”

— Steve Martin

57. “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?”

— Steve Martin

58. “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.”

— Steve Martin

59. “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.”

— Steve Martin

60. “So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.”

— Steve Martin

61. “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.”

— Steve Martin

62. “She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn’t, because he didn’t care.”

— Steve Martin

63. “I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.”

— Steve Martin

64. “I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.”

— Steve Martin

65. “Nothing I do is done by popular demand.”

— Steve Martin

66. “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.”

— Steve Martin

67. “I just gave my cat a bath. Now how do I get all this fur off my tounge?”

— Steve Martin

68. “You kill me and I’ll see that you never work in this town again.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

70. “The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that’s when I first started using verbs.”

— Steve Martin

71. “It’s not tipping I believe in. It’s overtipping.”

— Steve Martin

72. “When I die, now don’t think that I’m a nut, don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut.”

— Steve Martin

73. “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.”

— Steve Martin

74. “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.”

— Steve Martin

75. “I am a wild and crazy guy!”

— Steve Martin

76. “A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.”

— Steve Martin

77. “The banjo is such a happy instrument – you can’t play a sad song on the banjo – it always comes out so cheerful.”

— Steve Martin

78. “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.”

— Steve Martin

79. “There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they’ll talk back to you.”

— Steve Martin

80. “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.”

— Steve Martin

81. “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.”

— Steve Martin

82. “I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while.”

— Steve Martin

83. “To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American.”

— Steve Martin

84. “There are few takers for the quiet heart.”

— Steve Martin

85. “I didn’t worry if a bit got no response, as long as I believed it had enough response to linger.”

— Steve Martin

86. “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.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

88. “When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.”

— Steve Martin

89. “You can’t really conduct your life by one or two phrases.”

— Steve Martin

90. “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.”

— Steve Martin

91. “A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”

— Steve Martin

92. “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.”

— Steve Martin

93. “A remarkable memoir that’s packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness.”

— Steve Martin

94. “She was feeling her bohemian oats.”

— Steve Martin

95. “When you’re reaching for a star, there’s a long way to fall.”

— Steve Martin

96. “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.”

— Steve Martin

97. “I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I’m working at it.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

99. “A triangle with four points is what Euclid rides into hell.”

— Steve Martin

100. “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.”

— Steve Martin