Steve Martin Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

How many people have never raised their hand before?

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.

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

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

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.

All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.

I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to write scripts for television. I wrote for my comedy act. Then I wrote screenplays, and then I started writing New Yorker essays, and then I started writing plays. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the New Yorker essays, but they were comic. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the '90s. In my head, there was a link between everything. One thing led to another.

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.

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

You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.

I'm 48. For a while after 'The Jerk' (movie) I had a feeling of failure. I was a little scared. First people discover you and they love you. You get big and then you fail. And people are glad that you fail. But I've always come back and I've started to trust myself.

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.

I like what a third man brings. A kind of oblique vision, seeing something in the material that you didn't know was there. As a comedian, I'm always listening to the audience. And in movies, sometimes the only audience you have is the producer and the director. I like having someone else's opinion, especially if you're on the same wavelength.

In my opening seconds, I would say, "It's great to be here," then move to several other spots on the stage and say, "No, it's great to be here!" I would move again: "No, it's great to be here!

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.

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.

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.

I couldn't see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, "I am Picasso." And I said, "Well, so what?

I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.

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.

I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was... an Arctic region covered with ice.

I'm not a human being. I'm despicable and disgusting - but that's where the money is.

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

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

I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial 'are we gonna do this,' 'how much will I be paid,' is there a lot of nights, who's it going to be with? The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The third stage is was the film a hit?

I will do anything to look like him - except, of course, exercise or eat right.

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.

When you're touring and if you go to a party, there's automatically a celebrity-audience distance. It follows you around, especially when you're on the road in small towns. Any time there is awe, it gets very difficult to be normal, to be yourself. But I'm not saying that that's what made me the way I am. I've probably always been distant.

The teen years are extremely serious and everything matters and every insult really hurts. I know there are cliques and bullying. And you don't yet ­understand that it will all go away.

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

When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them — and nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’

Women have choices, and men have responsibilities.

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I'd go, 'Okay, I'll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.' Really. But I've made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

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.

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...

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