Top 100 Steve Martin Quotes
#1. So much emotion can be brought in an animated film that's very hard to get in a live-action film. I haven't quite put my finger on why, but it might be because the characters can make facial expression that, if you made them in a movie, they'd call them corny.
Steve Martin
#2. I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was ... an arctic wilderness.
Steve Martin
#3. Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.
Steve Martin
#4. Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
Steve Martin
#5. Somewhere in the world is ... The world's worst doctor and he could be yours.
Steve Martin
#6. I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language ... Apache.
Steve Martin
#7. I can't smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart
Steve Martin
#8. I started a grease fire at McDonald's - threw a match in the cook's hair.
Steve Martin
#9. I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.
Steve Martin
#10. 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
#11. I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Steve Martin
#13. 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.
Steve Martin
#14. You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.
Steve Martin
#16. 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
#17. 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?
Steve Martin
#18. Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
Steve Martin
#19. Now you see ... they' re not fit for humans ... " "Put them on me.
Steve Martin
#20. I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that's in my head.
Steve Martin
#21. I see other people crossing the street at the curb and I don't know how they can do it.
Steve Martin
#22. 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
#23. I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
Steve Martin
#24. 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.
Steve Martin
#25. With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.
Steve Martin
#26. 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
#27. Mirabelle, who never takes credit for her attractiveness, believes it is not she he is responding to, but rather something independent of her.
Steve Martin
#28. ... when the person beside you is making you alert and keen and the idea of being with anyone else is not imaginable ...
Steve Martin
#29. I didn't worry if a bit got no response, as long as I believed it had enough response to linger.
Steve Martin
#30. There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they'll talk back to you.
Steve Martin
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored.
Steve Martin
#35. 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
#36. I really like the animated film process. It's kind of like doing a play, because you can experiment with it, rewrite it, screen it, go back, then work on it a little bit more. If the joke doesn't work, you can fix it. It's different from a live action movie.
Steve Martin
#37. 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
#38. He knows only what is right in front of him; she is aware of every incoming sensation that glances obliquely against her soft, fragile core
Steve Martin
#39. He had no college dreams and hence no proximity to the challenge of new faces and ideas.
Steve Martin
#40. We've had some fun tonight ... considering we're all gonna die someday.
Steve Martin
#41. You kill me and I'll see that you never work in this town again.
Steve Martin
#42. 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.
Steve Martin
#43. It's not tipping I believe in. It's overtipping.
Steve Martin
#44. It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay up on it.
Steve Martin
#45. Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties.
Steve Martin
#46. The dictionary is a perfect example of overalphabetization, with its harsh rules and every little word neatly in place. It almost makes me want to go on a diet of grapes and waste away to nothing.
Steve Martin
#47. You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
Steve Martin
#48. It is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Steve Martin
#49. There's someone out there for everyone-even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.
Steve Martin
#50. When you're reaching for a star, there's a long way to fall.
Steve Martin
#51. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
Steve Martin
#52. Romance takes place when you first fall in love. It stirs all emotions and you can manipulate and be manipulated.
Steve Martin
#53. I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything.
Steve Martin
#54. The dawn breaks everything, including the mood from the night before.
Steve Martin
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. Working at the magic shop really gave me a sense of comedy because it was all jokes.
Steve Martin
#58. 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
#59. A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
Steve Martin
#60. 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
#61. I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they're crouching and hidden.
Steve Martin
#62. It's a mystery to me the way that contemporary art galleries function.
Steve Martin
#63. I believe in eight of the ten commandments. I believe in going to church every Sunday ... unless there's a game on.
Steve Martin
#64. As we get older we either become our worst selves or our best selves
Steve Martin
#65. I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can't lift it.
Steve Martin
#66. Lots of women are getting involved. They're not satisfied just being passengers anymore.
Steve Martin
#67. The conversation at dinner hadn't been successful either; it bore the marks of an old married couple who had very little left to say to each other.
Steve Martin
#68. In psychoanalysis, you try to retain a discovery; in art, once the thing is made, you let it go.
Steve Martin
#69. I love doing my surreal sing-along that had words that no one could follow.
Steve Martin
#70. The presence of excessive wealth puts an unnatural spin on the appreciation of art.
Steve Martin
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. Within you is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. - Hermann Hesse
Steve Martin
#74. 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.
Steve Martin
#75. I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.
Steve Martin
#76. 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.
Steve Martin
#78. 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
#79. Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.
Steve Martin
#80. I love comedy. That's what got me into the arts. I don't even know how to categorize myself anymore.
Steve Martin
#81. She started converting objects of beauty into objects of value.
Steve Martin
#82. 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.
Steve Martin
#83. It eventually appeared to be me, cinematically. When I was writing it I was actually an author, you know, writing a book ... But there certainly is a difference in energy between a younger man and an older man.
Steve Martin
#84. 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
#85. I never thought about success. I always thought about doing the job at hand. My goal was getting through the show that night.
Steve Martin
#86. 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
#87. I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while.
Steve Martin
#88. An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
Steve Martin
#89. To have someone play off and be with a band is more pleasurable.
Steve Martin
#90. 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
#91. I'm always looking for something to engage my imagination and take me on a little mental voyage. I just want a new topic in my life.
Steve Martin
#92. 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
#93. I've decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn't getting enough tar.
Steve Martin
#94. Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
Steve Martin
#95. Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.
Steve Martin
#96. Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
Steve Martin
#97. You have to get comfortable [with your work], you really have to know what you're doing, and it has to be almost boring to you to be able to do it well.
Steve Martin
#98. They told me to just "act like myself." When I said, "How do I do that?" they said to just have fun with it, but I'm not sure what they meant.
Steve Martin
#99. They want me on the television shows now because I did so well on Celebrity Assholes.
Steve Martin
#100. These days it's hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.
Steve Martin
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