Steve Martin Quotes

Steve Martin delivers sharp, funny quips about fame, health and the absurdities of showbiz.

46 quotes

1. The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now!

2. All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: 'Dead men don't wear plaid.' Hmm... Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means.

3. You kill me and I'll see that you never work in this town again.

4. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.

5. Why is it we don't always recognize the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?

6. Hosting the Oscars is like making love to a beautiful woman - it's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal's out of town.

7. I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.

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

9. I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.

10. Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience laughs, repeats) Good!

11. It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary...but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

12. I used to smoke marijuana. But I'll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . But never at dusk. Never at dusk.

13. I don't think I'd believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch.

14. You know, a lot of people come to me and they say, 'Steve, how can you be so fucking funny?' There's a secret to it, it's no big deal. Before I go out, I put a slice of bologna in each of my shoes. So when I'm on stage, I feel funny.

15. (Audience member): What's your mood watch say?

16. (Martin): Yeah, I remember when I had my first beer.

17. People come up to me and say 'Steve, what is film editing?' And I say 'How should I know? You're the director.'

18. Comedy is not pretty.

19. First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

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

21. I believe that sex is the most beautiful, natural, and wholesome thing that money can buy.

22. I'm not into that one-night thing. I think a person should get to know someone and even be in love with them before you use them and degrade them

23. Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

24. There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that.

25. Well, excuuuuuse me!!!!

26. What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

27. Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else's message - but writing is more of an accomplishment.

28. 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.

29. When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.

30. 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.

31. At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

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

33. The lure in art collecting and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust in paper money: it makes no sense when you really think about it. New artistic images are so vulnerable to opinion that it wouldn't take much more than a whim for a small group of collectors to decide that a contemporary artist was not so wonderful anymore, was so last year.

34. My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

35. What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. Women have choices, and men have responsibilities.

39. A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond…

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.

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

44. To me, torture would be, "I can't think what to write in the next sentence. I'm stuck." Torture would be if you didn't have the next idea.

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

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