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Comedy Quotes by Steve Martin

44 Comedy quotes by Steve Martin

All Comedy quotes Steve Martin’s page

Steve Martin says he started with no joke skills, learning that comedy is making people laugh without making them puke. He describes a good joke as a flash of knowledge, and he credits persistence as a substitute for talent while noting that many comedies feel predictable.

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Comedy is not pretty.

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

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Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

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A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond…

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With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you're never off the hook.

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Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke

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Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.

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Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.

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Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.

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It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You…

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

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

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I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little…

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Working at the magic shop really gave me a sense of comedy because it was all jokes.

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In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand…

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I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

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When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it…

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Any type of humor can be transferred to the screen, as long as there's clarity. The audience wants to know just what…

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At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me,…

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I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher…

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Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a…

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When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to…

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I think when I was young, let's call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved…

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With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you…

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My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the…

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“What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it?…

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I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where…

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I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to…

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Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three…

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I like what a third man brings. A kind of oblique vision, seeing something in the material that you didn't know was…

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“Now that I had assigned myself an act without jokes, I gave myself a rule. Never let them know I was bombing”

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Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.

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Deeply funny musings and adventures elevate Paul Rudnick to the highest level of American comedy writing.

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I love comedy. That's what got me into the arts. I don't even know how to categorize myself anymore.

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I think probably the most difficult challenge was just the climb and rise in show business because I went through my entire…

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I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and…

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I knew I wanted to be in show business so I took the path of least resistance. I loved comedy. But you…

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I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One…

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I didn't come from a wealthy family. I had no money. Maybe it goes back to naivete which is your greatest asset…

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I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the…

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More by Steve Martin

“People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio Morandi,…

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

“It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards…

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

“And after his unparsable response, including a passage where he said he was 'blurring the boundaries between a thing and thought,' she said, 'Thank…

I have no fear, no fear at all. I wake up, and I have no fear. I go to bed without fear. Fear, fear,…

“Be undeniably good.”

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

Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has…

“Lacey was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized. Alone, she was…

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…

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

The lure in art collecting and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust…

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the…

What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer…