Quotes By Steve Martin

I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I'm sure that's some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there's a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.

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

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.

Love is a promise delivered already broken.

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.

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.

Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role... I've had people come up to me and say, 'We want to remake 'The Jerk' with so and so.' And I say, 'Fine.' It just doesn't bother me. It's an honor actually.

I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

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.

Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.

I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.

In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don't think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.

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.

I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like 'Letterman' and 'The View,' and I've heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven't felt any negativity toward me or my music.

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

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn't turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.

Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.

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

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.

The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.

Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.

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

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.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.

I was raised with 'Laurel and Hardy' and 'I Love Lucy' and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself.