steve-martin

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
Steve Martin
%
Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.
Steve Martin
%
I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome
things that money can buy.
Steve Martin
%
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
%
It's pain that changes our lives.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything.
Steve Martin
%
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Steve Martin
%
I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but
if you set out to make art you're an idiot.
Steve Martin
%
You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.
Steve Martin
%
Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
Steve Martin
%
... you're nuts but you're welcome here.
Steve Martin
%
I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
Steve Martin
%
Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
We've had some fun tonight...considering we're all gonna die someday.
Steve Martin
%
...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,Shopgirl
%
If you've got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread,
you've got 71 cents left; But if you've got seventeen grand and you
spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you've still got seventeen
grand. There's a math lesson for you.
Steve Martin
%
First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease
named after me.
Steve Martin
%
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,Shopgirl
%
I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool
anyone.
Steve Martin
%
I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid
they are or how superior I am to them.
Steve Martin
%
I gave my cat a bath the other day...they love it. He sat there, he
enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but
other than that...
Steve Martin
%
The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the
banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.
Steve Martin
%
I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale
blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they
drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of
all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.
Steve Martin
%
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,Shopgirl
%
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,The Pleasure of My Company
%
I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I
don't.
Steve Martin
%
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but
a bunch of blank paper.
Steve Martin
%
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.
Steve Martin
%
The operation was a success, but I'm afraid the doctor is dead.
Steve Martin
%
Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she
thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time
zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are
connected without ever knowing it.
Steve Martin
%
Be so good they can't ignore you.
Steve Martin
%
Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself
up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
Steve Martin
%
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.
Steve Martin
%
She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but
couldn't, because he didn't care.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
Were they beautiful?  We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties.
Steve Martin
%
Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
Steve Martin
%
Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we?  He's a writer that hasn't
been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.
Steve Martin,Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
%
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,Shopgirl
%
A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he
spends more than two hours working on his hair.
Steve Martin
%
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.
Steve Martin
%
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when
you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.
Steve Martin
%
I have found that--just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to
stand in for experience.
Steve Martin,An Object Of Beauty
%
Or is it that I think too much?
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
[her] mind blackens. The blackness is not a thought, but if it could
be pressed into a thought, if a chemical from a dropper could be
dripped onto it causing its color and essence to become visible, it
would take the shape of this sentence: Why does no one want me?
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
Somewhere in the world is...The world's worst doctor and he could be
yours.
Steve Martin
%
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,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Hello. I'm hello, and I'd like to say myself.
Steve Martin
%
Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river.
Steve Martin,L.A. Story and Roxanne: Screenplays
%
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,Shopgirl: A Novella
%
Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element
necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that
keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are
about to do.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA: WHY IT'S A BAD TITLE

I admit that "Love in the time of . . ." is a great title, up to a
point. You're reading along, you're happy, it's about love. I like the
way the word time comes in - a nice, nice feeling. Then the morbid
Cholera appears. I was happy till then. Why not "Love in the Time of
the Blue, Blue, Bluebirds"? "Love in the Time of Oozing Sores and
Pustules" is probably an earlier title the author used as he was
writing in a rat-infested tree house on an old Smith Corona. This
writer, whoever he is, could have used a couple of weeks in Pacific
Daylight Time.
Steve Martin,Pure Drivel
%
Scientists at first were skeptical that a kitten-type being could
exist in the rare Martian atmosphere. As a test, two Earth kittens
were put in a chamber that simulated the Martian air. The diary of
this experiment is fascinating:

6:00 A.M.: Kittens appear to sleep.
7:02 A.M.: Kitten wakes, darts from one end of cage to another for no
apparent reason.

7:14 A.M.: Kitten runs up wall of cage, leaps onto other kitten for no
apparent reason.

7:22 A.M.: Kitten lies on back and punches other kitten for no
apparent reason.

7:30 A.M.: Kitten leaps, stops, darts left, abruptly stops, climbs
wall, clings for two seconds, falls on head, darts right for no
apparent reason.

7:51 A.M.: Kitten parses first sentence of daily newspaper that is at
bottom of chamber.

With the exception of the parsing, all behavior is typical of Earth
kitten behavior. The parsing activity, which was done with a small
ball-point pen, was an anomaly.
Steve Martin,Pure Drivel
%
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,Shopgirl
%
There are few takers for the quiet heart.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
I used to smoke marijuana. But Ill 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,
mid-evening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early
mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-mid-afternoon. Oh, sometimes the
early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk.
Steve Martin
%
You can start by wiping that fucking dumb-ass smile off your rosey,
fucking, cheeks! Then you can give me a fucking automobile... a
fucking Datsun, a fucking Toyota, a fucking Mustang, a fucking Buick!
Four fucking wheels and a seat! And I really don't care for the way
your company left me in the middle of fucking nowhere with fucking
keys to a fucking car that isn't fucking there. And I really didn't
care to fucking walk down a fucking highway and across a fucking
runway to get back here to have you smile at my fucking face. I want a
fucking car RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
Steve Martin
%
Always...no wait...never.....
Steve Martin
%
With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three
categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
Be undeniably good.
Steve Martin
%
You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take
them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.'
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
She was feeling her bohemian oats.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes
me insane.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
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 didnt 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,Shopgirl
%
Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she
was potential; with others she was realized.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
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.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
...when the person beside you is making you alert and keen and the
idea of being with anyone else is not imaginable...
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
...just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it
turns out today is.
Steve Martin
%
For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will
cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go.
She hits bottom.  She dwells in the muck for several months, not
depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks
is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
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,Shopgirl
%
Unlike Ray Porter, his love is fearless and without reservation.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
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,The Pleasure of My Company
%
Mirabelle is attractive; it's just that she is never the first or
second girl chosen.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
But Carroll's were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a
new way:

1) Babies are illogical.
2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
3) Illogical persons are despised.

Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles.

And:

1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste.
2) No modern poetry is free from affectation.
3) All of your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles.
4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste.
5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles.

Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Lord loves a workin' man; don't trust whitey
Steve Martin
%
How many people have never raised their hand before?
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
I just gave my cat a bath. Now how do I get all this fur off my tounge?
Steve Martin
%
both you and paintings are layered... first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso - a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever -- God can happen in that quarter of an inch -- the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
Mirabelle is not affected by a mans failures to approach her, as her
own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in
the first place.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low,
sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized
arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although
the question that goes begging is, for what?
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
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,An Object of Beauty
%
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does
not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand
the subtleties of slights and pains, that 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
%
She is nearing forty and not so easily forgiven as when her skin
bloomed like roses.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
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 didnt 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 lifes happiest
days.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
. . . Now you see . . . they' re not fit for humans . . ." "Put them on me.
Steve Martin,Cruel Shoes
%
I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point?
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
...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,An Object of Beauty
%
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?
Steve Martin,Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
%
...My father muttered something to me, and I responded with a mumbled
"What". He shouted, "You heard me," thundered up from his chair,
pulled his belt out of its loops, and inflicted a beating that seemed
never to end. I curled my arms around my body as he stood over me like
a titan and delivered the blows. This was the only incident of its
kind in our family. My father was never physically abusive toward my
mother or sister and he was never again physically extreme with
me. However, this beating and his worsening tendency to rages directed
at my mother - which I heard in fright through the thin walls of our
home - made me resolve, with icy determination, that only the most
formal relationship would exist between my father and me, and for
perhaps thirty years, neither he nor I did anything to repair the
rift.

The rest of my childhood, we hardly spoke; there was little he said to
me that was not critical, and there was little I said back that was
not terse or mumbled. When I graduated from high school, he offered to
buy me a tuxedo. I refused because I had learned from him to reject
all aid and assistance; he detested extravagance and pleaded with us
not to give him gifts. I felt, through a convoluted logic, that in my
refusal, I was being a good son. I wish now that I had let him buy me
a tuxedo, that I had let him be a dad. Having cut myself off from him,
and by association the rest of the family, I was incurring
psychological debts that would come due years later in the guise of
romantic misconnections and a wrongheaded quest for solitude.

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,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe:
She met me.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
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.
Steve Martin
%
...the divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of
entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of
condominiums.
Steve Martin
%
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,Shopgirl
%
I opened the show with this line: "I have decided to give the greatest
performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that's tomorrow night.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
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!
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out
against a placid background.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my
lucky astrology mood watch.
Steve Martin
%
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.
Steve Martin
%
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,An Object of Beauty
%
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.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
If you occasionally wonder how I know about some of the events I
describe in this book, I don't. I have found that--just as in real
life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting
her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her
mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously
proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present
world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened
long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but
the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
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.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
All of lifes riddles are answered in the movies.
Steve Martin
%
Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Other names came, but the square overflowed and the confusion pleased
me. I shifted away from the window, turning my back on the apartment
across the street. I moved to the living room and sat, silently
thanking those who had brought me here and those had affected me, both
above and below consciousness. I thought of the names in and around
the magic square. I thought of their astounding number, both in the
present and in the past, of Zandy and Angela, of Brian, of Granny,
even of my father, whose disavowal of me led to this place, and I
understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I
had constricted my life, as much as I closed and narrowed the channels
into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.
Steve Martin
%
Introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
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,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Being on Twitter is like having a fern.
Steve Martin
%
She started converting objects of beauty into objects of value.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and
on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio
Morandi, most of them no bigger than a tea tray.  Their thin browns,
ashy grays, and muted blues made people speak softly to one another,
as if a shouted word might curdle one of the paintings and ruin it.
Bottles, carafes, and ceramic whatnots sat in his paintings like small
animals huddling for warmth, and these shy pictures could easily hang
next to a Picasso or Matisse without feeling inferior.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
She didn't even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think
the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on
the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
Lacey was just as happy alone as with company.  When she was alone,
she was potential; with others she was realized.  Alone, she was
self-contained, her tightly spinning magnetic energy oscillating
around her.  When in company, she had invisible tethers to anyone in
the room: as they moved away, she pulled them in.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
Let's suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." IN the 18th century, you would have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individually to each one of them. However, here in the third millennium, with our advances in telephone communication, it is possible to say "I am a jerk" to a thousand people at a time by forgetting to turn off your cell phone and having it ring during a performance of Death of a Salesman.
Steve Martin
%
I'm smart enough to know that Elizabeth had no doubt seen dozens of men leap over curbs without her falling in love with the leaper, but I do believe this: When an endeavor is special in a person's life, others discern it intuitively and appreciate it more, like the praise a child receives for a lumpy clay sculpture.  And as ordinary as such an event might be, it can be instilled with uncommon power.
Steve Martin,The Pleasure of My Company
%
The auction houses seemed not as dull as their financial counterparts on Wall Street, where parents of daughters imagined glass celings and bottom patting.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
I could dream it forever and still not do it, but when the time comes for it to be done, God, I want to be ready for it, to be ready for the moment of convergence between the thing done and the doing of it, between the thing to be made and its maker.  At that moment, I am speaking for everyone; I am dreaming for the billions yet to come; I am taking part of us that cannot be understood by God, and letting it bleed from the wrist onto the canvas.  And it can only be made, because I have felt these things: my lust, my greed, my hatred, my happiness.
Steve Martin,Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
%
Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus
Be dull and boring and omnipresent
Criticize things you don't know about
Be oblong and have your knees removed
Steve Martin
%
Had his room been facing west he would have noted the sparkling twenty-five-mile vista to the sea which looks almost like the Mediterranean. He would have noted how the streets of L.A. undulate over short hills as though a finger is poking the landscape from underneath. How laid over this crosshatch are streets meandering on the diagonal creating a multitude of ways to get from one place to another by traveling along the hypotenuse. These are the avenues of the tryst which enable Acting Student A to travel the eighteen miles across town to Acting Student B's garage apartment in nine minutes flat after a hot-blooded phone call at midnight. Had he been facing seaward on a balcony overlooking the city the writer might have heard drifting out of a tiny apartment window the optimistic voice of a shower singer imbued with the conviction that this is a place where it is possible to be happy.
Steve Martin,Pure Drivel
%
But my mother was aglow. She had a continuing fascination with celebrities, and now she had one of her own. She was never moved by what I was doing (in an interview she said, "He writes his own material, Im always telling him he needs a new writer")...
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
An artist who painted a face was now 'playing with the idea of portraiture,'  or 'exploring push-pull aesthetics,' or toying with contradictions like 'menacing-slash-playful,' but he or she was never, ever, just painting a face.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
I am tired, so very tired of thinking about Lacey Yeager, yet I worry that unless I write her story down, and see it bound and tidy on my bookshelf, I will be unable to ever write about anything else.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.
Steve Martin
%
Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
Steve Martin
%
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
%
And after his unparsable response, including a passage where he said he was 'blurring the boundaries between a thing and thought,' she said, 'Thank you, I get lost sometimes,' while laying two fingers on his folded arm.
Steve Martin,An Object of Beauty
%
He doesnt understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that 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,Shopgirl
%
Um dia sem sol e como, voce sabe, noite.
Steve Martin
%
A kiss may not be the truth but it is what we wish were true.
L.A. Story (1991)  Harris Telemacher (Steve Martin)
Steve Martin
%
It's so beautiful where I am today that it makes me wonder where I am.
Steve Martin
%
She has simply never quite learned to walk or hold herself comfortably
Steve Martin,Shopgirl
%
What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Free love, man, Free Love! Which, by the way, was the single greatest concept a young man has ever heard. About three years late, women got wise an my frustration returned to normal levels.
Steve Martin
%
The public has a short memory. That's why all these big stars do these crazy, terrible things and two years later they're back in the biz, you know. 'Cause the public has a short memory. Let me give you a little test, okay? This is my thesis -- the public has a short memory and, like-- How many people remember, a couple of years ago, when the Earth blew up? How many people? See? So few people remember. And you would think that something like that, people would remember. But NOOO! You don't remember that? The Earth blew up and was completely destroyed? And we escaped to this planet on the giant Space Ark? Where have you people been? And the government decided not to tell the stupider people 'cause they thought that it might affect-- [dawning realization, looks around] Ohhhh! Okay! Uh, let's move on!
Steve Martin
%
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,Shopgirl
%
A triangle with four points is what Euclid rides into hell.
Steve Martin
%
The Feynman Dilemma

A diner says to a waiter, Whats this fly doing in my soup? And the waiter says, It looks like the backstroke. Yet if the same scene is viewed while plunging into a black hole at the speed of light, it will look like a Mickey Mouse lunch pail from the thirties, except that Mickeys head has been replaced by a Lincoln penny
Steve Martin
%
I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.
Steve Martin,Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
%
Dogs in My Nose --

When I woke up that morning, it didn't take me long to realize there were dogs in my nose. I could hear their muffled barks; I could feel their playful vibrations.

It's not dangerous to have dogs in your nose, in fact, it's quite all right to leave them in there for an hour or so. But in this case, because they got in there without permission, I decided to expel them immediately, coaxing them out with a piece of hamburger.

The dogs popped out and landed on the floor. They shook their little floppy ears and bounded off, and I was amused at the prospect of some other weary traveler awakening to find he had dogs in his nose.
Steve Martin
%
Bohemians.

These Bohemians, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Williams, and their seven children, Biff, Tina, Sparky, Louise, Tuffy, Mickey, and Biff Number Two, lived in a notorious artist's colony and planned community.

Naturally, the bohemian's existence thrived on creativity. Early in the morning, Mrs. Williams would rise and create breakfast. Then, Mr. Williams, inspired by his wife's limitless energy, would rush off to a special room and create tiny hairs in a sink. The children would create things, too. But being temperamental artists, they would often flush them away without a second thought.

But the bohemians' creativity didn't stop there. Mr. Williams would then rush off downtown and create reams and reams of papers with numbers on them and send them out to other Bohemians who would create special checks to send to him with figures like $7.27written on them.

At home, the children would be creating unusual music, using only their voices to combine in avant-garde, atonal melodies.

Yes, these were the bohemians. A seething hot-bed of rebellion-the artists, the creators of all things that lie between good and bad.
Steve Martin
%