Steve Martin Quotes

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.

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.

My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.

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.

The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.

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

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

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.

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.

I don't watch myself gener­ally. I do something, see it once, and then I'll probably never see it again unless it's an accident.

Art as an aesthetic principle was supported by thousands of years of discernment and psychic rewards, but art as a commodity was held up by air. The loss of confidence that affected banks and financial instruments was not affecting cherubs, cupids and flattened popes. The objects hadn't changed: what was there before was there after. But a vacancy was created with the clamoring crowds deserted and retrenched.

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.

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.

The operation was a success, but I'm afraid the doctor is dead.

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

I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.

I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache.

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

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

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.

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

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.

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.

When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.

Love is a promise delivered already broken.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

She was feeling her bohemian oats.

Nothing I do is done by popular demand.

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

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.

...a young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of soft-shell crabs.

Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.

I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

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.

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

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.

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

I take editing seriously. It's a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can't wait to get back their notes and see what they've said. I don't criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it's just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.

Hello. I'm hello, and I'd like to say myself.

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

As much as I remember, I just thought, I want to sing a song that starts normal and ends crazy.

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.

I try not to think about legacy because it is all ­folly. If you study history, even recent history, you'll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten.

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

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