Top 250 Steve Martin Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 6

101. “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

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

— Steve Martin

103. “A luxury item is a thing you have that annoys other people that you have it.”

— Steve Martin

104. “I think when the movie ‘Roxanne’ came out, which I also had written, I felt something new that I never felt, which was respect.”

— Steve Martin

105. “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.”

— Steve Martin

106. “I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.”

— Steve Martin

107. “The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.”

— Steve Martin

108. “I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can’t lift it.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

110. “I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over.”

— Steve Martin

111. “I have found that – just as in real life – imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.”

— Steve Martin

112. “After one of my plays came out, I had mixed reviews, some bad and some good. One day, it dawned on me. I thought, ‘I wrote a play and he wrote a review, and that’s the difference between him and me.’”

— Steve Martin

113. “I think communication is so firsbern.”

— Steve Martin

114. “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.”

— Steve Martin

115. “There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I’m talking about, of course, is cat juggling.”

— Steve Martin

116. “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.”

— Steve Martin

117. “You can’t make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else.”

— Steve Martin

118. “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...”

— Steve Martin

119. “Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river.”

— Steve Martin

120. “College totally changed my life. It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

122. “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.”

— Steve Martin

123. “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.”

— Steve Martin

124. “I never touched a gun in my life. That and that alone forever doomed me to middle management.”

— Steve Martin

125. “I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.”

— Steve Martin

126. “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.”

— Steve Martin

127. “All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”

— Steve Martin

128. “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.”

— Steve Martin

129. “Halle Berry is here, whose win last year broke down barriers for unbelievably hot women.”

— Steve Martin

130. “Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.”

— Steve Martin

131. “Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.”

— Steve Martin

132. “I can understand the drug thing. So they feel that it’s more important to take the drugs than to do a good show for the people.”

— Steve Martin

133. “With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.”

— Steve Martin

134. “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.”

— Steve Martin

135. “She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.”

— Steve Martin

136. “I’m not trying to be a big shot or anything like that, but I get my drinks half price.”

— Steve Martin

137. “The course was more plodding than heroic. I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.”

— Steve Martin

138. “Lord loves a workin’ man; don’t trust whitey.”

— Steve Martin

139. “We’ve taken what was just once a racetrack and made it a multifaceted gaming destination for the entire region.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

141. “I find animated movies very touching. They reach an audience that’s hard to get with a live-action film.”

— Steve Martin

142. “Comedians don’t get Oscars, so I gave up on that a long time ago. And I can’t really speak about the Oscar-worthiness of my own performance.”

— Steve Martin

143. “Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.”

— Steve Martin

144. “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.”

— Steve Martin

145. “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.”

— Steve Martin

146. “With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.”

— Steve Martin

147. “Lots of women are getting involved. They’re not satisfied just being passengers anymore.”

— Steve Martin

148. “I started a grease fire at McDonald’s – threw a match in the cook’s hair.”

— Steve Martin

149. “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.”

— Steve Martin

150. “I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That’s the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.”

— Steve Martin