Steve Martin Quotes

74 Sourced Quotes

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

Steve Martin
Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything!

Steve Martin
It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing.

Steve Martin
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
I was deeply unhappy, but I didn't know it because I was so happy all the time.

Steve Martin
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.

Steve Martin
I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can't lift it.

Steve Martin
I didn't worry if a bit got no response, as long as I believed it had enough response to linger.

Steve Martin
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
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.

Steve Martin
I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.

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
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
So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.

Steve Martin
Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.

Steve Martin
He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.

Steve Martin
She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care.

Steve Martin
It's so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, 'cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then 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 if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

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
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, I would never do that.

Steve Martin
You know that look women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.

Steve Martin
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 repeats, laughs) Good!

Steve Martin
Introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness

Steve Martin
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
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 didn't 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