Top 250 Steve Martin Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.”

— Steve Martin

202. “It was easier to sell a painting that was not for sale.”

— Steve Martin

203. “These days it’s hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.”

— Steve Martin

204. “She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn’t be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart.”

— Steve Martin

205. “Mirabelle is not affected by a man’s failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place.”

— Steve Martin

206. “It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing.”

— Steve Martin

207. “He gave her his phone number, in a peculiar reversal of dating procedure. She might have considered kissing him, even after the horrible first date, but he just didn’t seem to know what to do. However, Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked.”

— Steve Martin

208. “I ignored my stand-up career for 25 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

209. “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.”

— Steve Martin

210. “It’s funny that some ideas start with a little “What if?” and then suddenly you’re spending a million dollars to shoot the scene and hoping that it works.”

— Steve Martin

211. “She looked down again and I was stymied. I sat. Oh, this was enough to make me love her, because I was right with her, understanding every second and longing to step in. I didn’t even need to know the specific that was troubling her, because to me her halting voice easily stood for the general woe that hangs in the air, even on life’s happiest days.”

— Steve Martin

212. “I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.”

— Steve Martin

213. “I loved magic, and so I would practice my magic tricks in front of a mirror for hours and hours and hours because I was told that you must practice, you must practice and never present a trick before it’s ready.”

— Steve Martin

214. “Unlike Ray Porter, his love is fearless and without reservation.”

— Steve Martin

215. “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.”

— Steve Martin

216. “The presence of excessive wealth puts an unnatural spin on the appreciation of art.”

— Steve Martin

217. “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.”

— Steve Martin

218. “I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct.”

— Steve Martin

219. “I was not naturally talented. I didn’t sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.”

— Steve Martin

220. “The environment changed with Martha Stewart and Enron.”

— Steve Martin

221. “I happened to take a photo, and there was my wife, my dog and my banjo, all in the same shot – and I thought, “Oh, that’s like a family portrait right there.””

— Steve Martin

222. “So she viewed time spent in the land of the normal as an investigation into the world of marriage-worthy men, even if she was unsure about her own interest in marriage. There must be one solid citizen who also had a spark of life, a sense of humor and adventure.”

— Steve Martin

223. “Life exists so the Universe can experience itself.”

— Steve Martin

224. “The dawn breaks everything, including the mood from the night before.”

— Steve Martin

225. “I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines.”

— Steve Martin

226. “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.”

— Steve Martin

227. “You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right.”

— Steve Martin

228. “7 hour sleep diet worked great. Will power held beautifully.”

— Steve Martin

229. “Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.”

— Steve Martin

230. “Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.”

— Steve Martin

231. “Romance takes place when you first fall in love. It stirs all emotions and you can manipulate and be manipulated.”

— Steve Martin

232. “Mirabelle is attractive; it’s just that she is never the first or second girl chosen.”

— Steve Martin

233. “I love doing my surreal sing-along that had words that no one could follow.”

— Steve Martin

234. “When I moved out of the house at eighteen, I rarely called home to check up on my parents or tell them how I was doing. Why? The answer shocks me as I write it: I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

— Steve Martin

235. “Private companies have a lot of capital. They can run things efficiently and get projects built.”

— Steve Martin

236. “Anyway, seeking work is a tad difficult given the poor design of the streets with their prohibitive curbs and driveways that don’t quite line up.”

— Steve Martin

237. “I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.”

— Steve Martin

238. “I’ve always believed that there are funny people everywhere, but they’re just not comedians. In fact, some of my best comedic inspirations were not professional entertainers.”

— Steve Martin

239. “Any type of humor can be transferred to the screen, as long as there’s clarity. The audience wants to know just what they’re supposed to be feeling, when they’re supposed to laugh.”

— Steve Martin

240. “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.”

— Steve Martin

241. “It’s so beautiful where I am today that it makes me wonder where I am.”

— Steve Martin

242. “You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.”

— Steve Martin

243. “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.”

— Steve Martin

244. “Mirabelle is not sparkling tonight, because she works only in gears, and tonight she is in the wrong gear. Third gear is her scholarly, perspicacious, witty self; second gear is her happy, giddy, childish self; and first gear is her complaining, helpless, unmotivated self. Tonight she is somewhere midshift, between helpless and childish.”

— Steve Martin

245. “The emotions of men, however, were of a different order. They were pesky annoyances, small dust devils at her feet. Her knack for causing heartbreak was innate, but her vitality often made people forgive her romantic misdeeds.”

— Steve Martin

246. “Mirabelle replaces the absent friends with books and television mysteries of the PBS kind. The books are mostly nineteenth-century novels in which women are poisoned or are doing the poisoning. She does not read these books as a romantic lonely hearts turning pages in the isolation of her room, not at all. She is instead an educated spirit with a sense of irony. She loves the gloom of these period novels, especially as kitsch, but beneath it all she finds that a part of her indentifies with all that darkness.”

— Steve Martin

247. “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.”

— Steve Martin

248. “A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.”

— Steve Martin

249. “This does not mean you are “losing it” or are “not playing with a full deck” or are “not all there” or that you’re “eating with the dirigibles” or “shellacking the waxed egg” or “looking inside your own mind and finding nothing there,” or any of the other demeaning epithets that are said about people who are peeling an empty banana.”

— Steve Martin

250. “Enjoyment while performing was rare – enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. After the shows, however, I experienced long hours of elation or misery depending on how the show went, because doing comedy alone onstage is the ego’s last stand.”

— Steve Martin