Top 250 Steve Martin Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I started a grease fire at McDonald’s – threw a match in the cook’s hair.”

— Steve Martin

152. “Comedy is not pretty.”

— Steve Martin

153. “I’m trying to think of other ones. Oh, yeah, I’d say – somebody would buy something and we’d say, and because you are our hundredth customer today, you get a free paperback.”

— Steve Martin

154. “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

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

— Steve Martin

156. “Yeah, well, we’re all writers, aren’t we? He’s a writer that hasn’t been published, and I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything.”

— Steve Martin

157. “Writing is extremely personal, and that’s the joy of it for me.”

— Steve Martin

158. “I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.”

— Steve Martin

159. “Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties.”

— Steve Martin

160. “I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.”

— Steve Martin

161. “I’m a bitter, sad, sour young man who makes a career out of hastling people with real careers.”

— Steve Martin

162. “Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.”

— Steve Martin

163. “There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.”

— Steve Martin

164. “Whether I’m involved in creating something or not, it’s a personal issue of do I respect it. But you can only know that five or ten years later.”

— Steve Martin

165. “Deeply funny musings and adventures elevate Paul Rudnick to the highest level of American comedy writing.”

— Steve Martin

166. “I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head.”

— Steve Martin

167. “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.”

— Steve Martin

168. “Working at the magic shop really gave me a sense of comedy because it was all jokes.”

— Steve Martin

169. “So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.”

— Steve Martin

170. “In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I’d meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I’d wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.”

— Steve Martin

171. “Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.”

— Steve Martin

172. “I choose a project based on whether it feels worthwhile working on when it comes to me. But secondly I choose it if it sounds like fun. Projects are determined by just how they strike me at the moment, as they have done throughout my whole life.”

— Steve Martin

173. “A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond...”

— Steve Martin

174. “How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?”

— Steve Martin

175. “I always think back to my high school days and realize all the people who were so popular then are nowhere now and all the people who were steadfast and steady-going are somewhere. So high school doesn’t necessarily translate to later in life.”

— Steve Martin

176. “Being on Twitter is like having a fern.”

— Steve Martin

177. “Hello. I’m hello, and I’d like to say myself.”

— Steve Martin

178. “I don’t think comic timing is the same as music timing, but I definitely find that I’ve learned from just writing in general that songs can be narrative without having a story.”

— Steve Martin

179. “I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.”

— Steve Martin

180. “You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.”

— Steve Martin

181. “Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true.”

— Steve Martin

182. “In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.”

— Steve Martin

183. “Rebelliousness really is the province of young people-that kind of iconoclasm.”

— Steve Martin

184. “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.”

— Steve Martin

185. “Doing comedy alone onstage is the ego’s last stand.”

— Steve Martin

186. “Comedy makes you humble. Because there are so many opportunities to miss, and strike out.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

188. “Awards mean nothing to comedians. What matters is the audience, how you’re doing – artistically, for the most part – at that moment.”

— Steve Martin

189. “She didn’t even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.”

— Steve Martin

190. “Relationships end, but they don’t end your life.”

— Steve Martin

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

— Steve Martin

192. “Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don’t know, there’s something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.”

— Steve Martin

193. “What means the most to me changes through the years. There was a time when movies meant the most. But when I’m concentrating on a project, that’s what means the most to me.”

— Steve Martin

194. “The overhead lights reflect in the glass countertop and mingle in the gray and black of the gloves, resulting in a mother-of-pearl swirl that sometimes sends Mirabelle into a shallow hypnotic dream.”

— Steve Martin

195. “There’s no better way to learn something than to learn it in front of an audience. Your terror drives you.”

— Steve Martin

196. “I think films are about having a good time, so I don’t know that there’s a message. The message of a film is always what a critic writes, and the fun of a film or the emotion of a film is what the audience feels.”

— Steve Martin

197. “The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.”

— Steve Martin

198. “I’m not Vegas. Places I play usually cost like $3 to get in, you know, and people are going: Gee, I’ve got $3, I think I’ll throw it away.”

— Steve Martin

199. “There’s a big difference between the National Book Awards and the Academy Awards. At the Academy Awards you can feel the greed and envy and ego. Whereas the National Book Awards are in New York.”

— Steve Martin

200. “Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.”

— Steve Martin