Background Image

...

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.

-Steve Martin

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Real Joy Is

Steve Martin

...

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.

Views: 86167

Topic

More From Steve Martin

I'm Enamored With The Art World. Anytime You Look At Anything That's Considered Artistic, There's A Commercial World Around It: The Ballet, Opera, Any Kind Of Music. It Can't Exist Without It.

A Day With Out Sun Shine Is Like..........night

Comedy Is A Distortion Of What Is Happening, And There Will Always Be Something Happening.

Comedy Makes You Humble. Because There Are So Many Opportunities To Miss, And Strike Out.

The Streets Of L.a. Undulate Over Short Hills As Though A Finger Is Poking The Landscape From Underneath ... 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.

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.

They Want Me On The Television Shows Now Because I Did So Well On Celebrity Assholes.

I Took Literally Everything I Knew How To Do On Stage With Me, Which Was Juggling, Magic And Banjo And My Little Comedy Routines.

Always...no Wait...never.

I Am A Wild And Crazy Guy!

Kids Like My Act Because I'm Wearing Nose Glasses. Adults Like My Act Because There's A Guy Who Thinks Putting On Nose Glasses Is Funny.

I Always Felt The Audience Sorta Tolerated The Serious Musical Parts While I Was Doing My Comedy.

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.

A Friend Of Mine Once Asked How To Make It In Show Business And I Said "be So Good That They Can't Ignore You." She Thought I Was Being Flip But It's True. The Challenge Is Trying To Live Up To The Opportunities Given Me.

When You're Touring And If You Go To A Party, There's Automatically A Celebrity-audience Distance. It Follows You Around, Especially When You're On The Road In Small Towns. Any Time There Is Awe, It Gets Very Difficult To Be Normal, To Be Yourself. But I'm Not Saying That That's What Made Me The Way I Am. I've Probably Always Been Distant.

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.

The Course Was More Plodding Than Heroic: I Did Not Strive Valiantly Against Doubters But Took Incremental Steps Studded With A Few Intuitive Leaps.

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.

It's Not The Size Of The Nose That Matters, It's What's Inside That Counts.

I Got A Flue Shot And Now My Chimney Works Perfectly.

If I Screw Up Raising My Kids, Nothing I Achieve Will Matter Much.

I Think There Are People Out There Writing Original Bluegrass Songs, But It's Hard To Get Them Out On The Air.

I Was Deeply Unhappy, But I Didn't Know It Because I Was So Happy All The Time.

The Presence Of Excessive Wealth Puts An Unnatural Spin On The Appreciation Of Art.

No Art Comes From The Conscious Mind.

I Just Downloaded Eleven Hundred Books Onto My Kindle, And Now I Can’t Lift It.

I've Put An Umbrella In My Mouth And Opened It. I Sat In A Lemon-meringue Pie. I've Done Terrible Things To My Dog With A Fork.

I Knew I Wanted To Be In Comedy But The Path Of Least Resistance Was Doing Stand-up In Folk Music Clubs Where I Could Get On Stage. I Guess You Could Get Up No Matter How Bad You Were And You Didn't Have To Audition. You Just Got Up. Everything Else Required An Audition And If You Auditioned For A Tv Show, You Would Stand In Line With A Hundred Other People. But At The Clubs, It Was Okay Just To Get Up, So That's Why I Started In Stand-up.

Somewhere In The World Is...the World's Worst Doctor And He Could Be Yours.

As A Human Being On Earth, You Can't Imagine Friendship Not Being Important In Some Other Solar System Or Some Other Planet, Or Some Other Context Of Beings That Are Conscious. We Even See It In Animals. It Is Important For People On Earth To Reach Out Or Reach Into Someone.

I'm The Leader Of The Platoon And I Run Gambling And Lotteries, Dances And I Sell Beer Illegally. I'm A Con Man And I'm Thoroughly Lovable.

Relationships End, But They Don't End Your Life. But People Do Often Spending More Time Finding Out About Failed Relationships Than Finding Successful Ones.

Bad Relationship

Despite A Lack Of Natural Ability, I Did Have The One Element Necessary To All Early Creativity: Naïveté, That Fabulous Quality That Keeps You From Knowing Just How Unsuited You Are For What You Are About To Do.

Or Is It That I Think Too Much?

It's Not What You Know, It's What You Think You Know.

You Think You Know

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.

I Just Respected Comedians Whether They Were Or They Weren't, From, You Know, New Or Old.

I Thought Yesterday Was The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life But It Turns Out Today Is.

It Eventually Appeared To Be Me, Cinematically. When I Was Writing It I Was Actually An Author, You Know, Writing A Book. ... But There Certainly Is A Difference In Energy Between A Younger Man And An Older Man.

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.

He Never Complicates A Desire By Overthinking It, Unlike Mirabelle, Who Spins A Cocoon Around An Idea Until It Is Immobile.

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.

When I Die, Now Don't Think That I'm A Nut, Don't Want No Fancy Funeral, Just One Like Old King Tut.

It's Very Hard Sometimes When You Can't Crack Something Or Can't Solve Something And You Keep Trying And Trying And You Know It's Falling A Little Bit Short. That's Very Hard, But Then When You Finally Do It, It's Very Rewarding And The Process Is Good Too, I Like Working With People This Way.

In Talking To Girls I Could Never Remember The Right Sequence Of Things To Say. I'd Meet A Girl And Say, Hi, Was It Good For You Too? If A Girl Spent The Night, I'd Wake Up In The Morning And Then Try To Get Her Drunk.

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.

Acting Has Helped Me Understand People, Not Only Because You Are Acting As A Character, But Also Because You Are Watching Other Actors Work. That Really Helps You Identify In Life When Someone Is Acting, Not Being True.

I Believe The United States Should Allow All Foreigners In This Country, Provided They Can Speak Our Native Language... Apache.

Native Language

There Are Some People That Will Not Pick Up A Phone And Call You, But If You Knock On A Door And Talk To Them, They'll Talk Back To You.

...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.

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?

Always Make Room For The Unexpected In Yourself.

I Believe In Eight Of The Ten Commandments. I Believe In Going To Church Every Sunday... Unless There's A Game On.

It Was Essential That I Never Show Doubt About What I Was Doing.

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.

I Can Understand The Drug Thing. So They Feel That It's More Important To Take The Drugs Than To Do A Good Show For The People.

I Ignored My Stand-up Career For Twenty-five Years, But Now, Having Finished This Memoir, I View This Time With Surprising Warmth. One Can Have, It Turns Out, An Affection For The War Years.

I Can Juggle. I Started Juggling As A Kid. And When I Worked At Disneyland, I Knew A Juggler There Named Christopher Faire, And He Taught Me How To Juggle. I Used It In My Comedy Act For A While.

Unlike Ray Porter, His Love Is Fearless And Without Reservation.

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.

Lacy Was Just As Happy Alone As With Company. When She Was Alone, She Was Potential; With Others She Was Realized.

All I've Ever Wanted Was An Honest Week's Pay For An Honest Day's Work.

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.

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.

Were They Beautiful? We Were All Beautiful. We Were In Our Twenties.

A Joke That Works Is Complete Knowledge In A Nanosecond.

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.

College Totally Changed My Life. It Changed What I Believe And What I Think About Everything. I Majored In Philosophy.

She Was Feeling Her Bohemian Oats.

When Your Hobbies Get In The Way Of Your Work - That's Ok; But When Your Hobbies Get In The Way Of Themselves... Well.

I Cannot Smell Mothballs Because It's So Difficult To Get Their Little Legs Apart.

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.

When You're Reaching For A Star, There's A Long Way To Fall.

I Used To Think A Wedding Was A Simple Affair. Boy And Girl Meet, They Fall In Love, He Buys A Ring, She Buys A Dress, They Say I Do. I Was Wrong. That's Getting Married. A Wedding Is An Entirely Different Proposition.

Falling In Love

You Want To Be A Bit Compulsive In Your Art Or Craft Or Whatever You Do.

Being On Twitter Is Like Having A Fern.

Love Is A Promise Delivered Already Broken.

It's Horrible For Someone To Listen To Someone Learning Any Instrument - When I Was First Learning The Banjo, I Used To Have To Go Out And Sit In The Car, And Even In The Summertime I'd Have To Roll Up The Windows. Because You Just Couldn't Practice A Banjo Or A Fiddle With Other People Around. Unless They're Being Paid.

I Just Gave My Cat A Bath. Now How Do I Get All This Fur Off My Tounge?

So, I Can Hurt Now, Or Hurt Later.

I Did A Lot Of Things When I First Started Out. In Order To Be In Show Business, I Juggled, I Did Magic Tricks, Cards Tricks And I Played The Banjo.

Anyone Who's Ever Worked With Meryl Streep Always Says The Same Thing: Can That Woman Act! And What's With All The Hitler Memorabilia?

I Believe You Should Place A Woman On A Pedestal: High Enough So You Can Look Up Her Dress.

Acting Keeps Me Alert To People, And Life. I Don't Know, There's Something About Going To Work Early In The Morning, And Having To Stay Alert And Concentrated. Maybe That Keeps Your Mind Alive.

I'm Trying To Think Of Other Ones. Oh, Yeah, I'd Say - Somebody Would Buy Something And We'd Say, And Because You Are Our Hundredth Customer Today, You Get A Free Paperback.

It [live Performance] Is Just Very Difficult. Doing An Hour, Hour And A Half Of Live Standup Is An Endurance Test. You Almost Have To Do It Every Day To Stay Up On It.

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.

I Think Films Are About Having A Good Time, So I Don't Know That There's A Message. The Message Of A Film Is Always What A Critic Writes, And The Fun Of A Film Or The Emotion Of A Film Is What The Audience Feels.

I Never Had A Movie That I Wanted To Do Turned Down In My Whole Life. I Always Write The Script First So It Speaks For Itself.

Communication Has Changed So Rapidly In The Last 20 Years, It's Almost Impossible To Predict What Might Occur Even In The Next Decade. E-mail, Which Now Sends Data Hurtling Across Vast Distances At The Speed Of Light, Has Replaced Primitive Forms Of Communication Such As Smoke Signals, Which Sent Data Hurtling Across Vast Distances At The Speed Of Light.

The Teen Years Are Extremely Serious And Everything Matters And Every Insult Really Hurts. I Know There Are Cliques And Bullying. And You Don't Yet understand That It Will All Go Away.

Private Companies Have A Lot Of Capital. They Can Run Things Efficiently And Get Projects Built.

With Comedy, You Never Know Until You Put It In Front Of An Audience. You Shoot It And A Year Later You Have No Idea If It's Going To Work. And Then You Get The Response. It's Great When It's Good.

It Was Easier To Sell A Painting That Was Not For Sale.

Performing Music Is A Way To Do Comedy, But Without The Obligation To Do A Solid Hour, Hour And Half Of A Standup. I Could Intersperse It With Music, So It Became A Really Good Format For Me.

I Like A Woman With A Head On Her Shoulders. I Hate Necks.

It's Pain That Changes Our Lives.

You Can't Make Something Beautiful By Trying To Make Something Beautiful. Something Becomes Beautiful In The Process Of Trying To Be Something Else.

I've Been Writing For A Long Time, Since The Late '60s. But It Hasn't Been In The Same Form. I Used To Write Scripts For Television. I Wrote For My Comedy Act. Then I Wrote Screenplays, And Then I Started Writing New Yorker Essays, And Then I Started Writing Plays. I Didn't Start Writing Prose, Really, Until The New Yorker Essays, But They Were Comic. I Didn't Start Writing Prose, Really, Until The '90s. In My Head, There Was A Link Between Everything. One Thing Led To Another.

Thankfully, Perseverance Is A Good Substitute For Talent.

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.

I Knew I Wanted To Be In Show Business So I Took The Path Of Least Resistance. I Loved Comedy. But You Never Know You Are Funny Until People Laugh. It's Just What I Was Interested In. I Could Make People Laugh, I Guess, But Doing It At School And Doing It Onstage Are Very Different Things.

Lord Loves A Workin' Man; Don't Trust Whitey

I Do Think That Animated Films Have The Ability To Touch You Someplace. There Is Something About Live Action Movies That Is Different Because We Know The Characters Are Real People, So They Always Stay Flawed For Us Somehow. But Animated Films Touch Us In A Very Clear, Uncomplicated Place. They Have That Ability. And An Animated Character Can Make An Expression In A Way Humans Can't Do.

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.

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 Think When The Movie `roxanne' Came Out, Which I Also Had Written, I Felt Something New That I Never Felt, Which Was Respect.

Awards Mean Nothing To Comedians. What Matters Is The Audience, How You're Doing - Artistically, For The Most Part - At That Moment.

Chaos In The Midst Of Chaos Isn't Funny, But Chaos In The Midst Of Order Is.

All Of Life’s Riddles Are Answered In The Movies.

My Problem Is That I Don't Get The Same Exhiliration From Success As I Get Depression From Failure.

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.

I Can't Smell Moth Balls, I Find It Too Difficult To Get Their Tiny Legs Apart

I Always Think Back To My High School Days And Realize All The People Who Were So Popular Then Are Nowhere Now And All The People Who Were Steadfast And Steady-going Are Somewhere. So High School Doesn't Necessarily Translate To Later In Life.

Don't Have Sex Man. It Leads To Kissing And Pretty Soon You Have To Start Talking To Them.

There's No Better Way To Learn Something Than To Learn It In Front Of An Audience. Your Terror Drives You.

You Know That Look That Women Get When They Want To Have Sex? Me Neither.

A Day Without Sunshine Is Like, You Know, Night.

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?

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.

I Would Like A Wine. The Purpose Of The Wine Is To Get Me Drunk. A Bad Wine Will Get Me As Drunk As A Good Wine. I Would Like The Good Wine. And Since The Result Is The Same No Matter Which Wine I Drink, I'd Like To Pay The Bad Wine Price.

Rebelliousness Really Is The Province Of Young People-that Kind Of Iconoclasm.

Tweeting Is Really Only Good For One Thing - It's Just Good For Tweeting... It Is Rewarding, Because It's Just Its Own Reward. It's Sort Of Like Heaven.

There's Someone Out There For Everyone - Even If You Need A Pickaxe, A Compass, And Night Goggles To Find Them.

It's Spooky To Look At Yourself, Because You Are Never Quite What You Think You Are. And You Are Never As Good Looking As The Person You Are Acting With, Or Something Like That. So I Learned To Stay Away From It Because It Was Giving Me More Negative Feelings Than Positive Ones.

What Means The Most To Me Changes Through The Years. There Was A Time When Movies Meant The Most. But When I'm Concentrating On A Project, That's What Means The Most To Me.

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.

To Have Someone Play Off And Be With A Band Is More Pleasurable.

When The Person Beside You Is Making You Alert And Keen And The Idea Of Being With Anyone Else Is Not Imaginable.

I Don't Really Manage My Time. I Really Just Wait Until I'm Inspired To Do Something. And When I'm Inspired To Do Something, It Just Happens.

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.

When I Was In College, I Was Debating To Try My Hand At Show Business, Or To Become A Professor. I Just Thought Of The Risk Of Not Going Into Show Business And Always Wondering If I Would've Had A Chance. Because That's Where My Real Heart Was.

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.

I Actually Credit Twitter With Fine-tuning Some Joke-writing Skills. I Still Feel Like I'm Working At It.

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 Was Seeking Comic Originality, And Fame Fell On Me As A Byproduct.

Your Only Guidepost Is Your Own Instinct And Judicious Editing. In My Stand-up Act I Learned That In The First 10 Minutes I Could Say Anything And It Would Get A Laugh. Then I'd Better Deliver. In The Movie It's The Same Thing. You Get A Lot Of Laughs When People First Sit Down And Then The Story Better Kick In. Many Years In Front Of An Audience, I Would Hope, Give Me A Sense Of What Works.

I Guess I Wouldn't Believe In Anything If It Weren't For My Lucky Astrology Mood Watch.

I've Run Into People In My Life Who Were So Dramatic; People Who Are So Extreme And So Frustrating To Be Around That You End Up Thinking About Them And Talking About Them For Literally Years After Your Experience With Them Is Over.

I've Decided To Take Up Smoking, My Doctor Said I Wasn't Getting Enough Tar.

I Love Animated Films When They Are Good, Because They Do Bring A Lot Of Emotion And Heart That's Very Difficult To Get In A Live Action Film.

Comedy Is Not Pretty.

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.

No Matter How Many Times People Say It - 'oh, I'm Just Writing This For Myself' 'oh, I'm Just Doing This For Myself' - Nobody's Doing It For Themselves! You're Doing It For An Audience. So Whether I'm Performing Or Writing A Book Or Playing Music, It's Definitely To Be Put Out There And To Be Received In Some Way, Definitely.

Working At The Magic Shop Really Gave Me A Sense Of Comedy Because It Was All Jokes.

Stand-up Life Is Really Hard. At One Point, I Got So Paralyzed I Could Write Five Screenplays Before I Could Write Three Jokes For Stand-up. Later, I've Finally Allowed Myself To Relax Quite A Bit, To Think I Can Do It Because I've Done It In The Past. The Pressure To Come Up With The Material Is The Same But The Anxiety About Whether I Can Do It Is Gone.

Relationships End, But They Don't End Your Life.

Bad Relationship

Relationships Ending

Failed Relationship

I Think I Did Pretty Well, Considering I Started Out With Nothing But A Bunch Of Blank Paper.

There's A Big Difference Between The National Book Awards And The Academy Awards. At The Academy Awards You Can Feel The Greed And Envy And Ego. Whereas The National Book Awards Are In New York.

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.

Talent Is The Ability To Say Things Well, But Genius Is The Ability To, Well, Say Things.

The Apple Pie Hubbub Was A Significant Novel For Me, Because That's When I First Started Using Verbs.

I Find Animated Movies Very Touching. They Reach An Audience That's Hard To Get With A Live-action Film.

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.

I Believe Entertainment Can Aspire To Be Art, And Can Become Art, But If You Set Out To Make Art You're An Idiot.

When Someone Less Capable Is Ahead Of Me, I Am Not Pleased. It Makes Me Insane.

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.

Different Experiences

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.

I'm 48. For A While After 'the Jerk' (movie) I Had A Feeling Of Failure. I Was A Little Scared. First People Discover You And They Love You. You Get Big And Then You Fail. And People Are Glad That You Fail. But I've Always Come Back And I've Started To Trust Myself.

Bad Psychoanalysis Would Say I Enjoyed Pleasing People, Working Really Hard And Pleasing People, Which Is Probably Related To My Father In Some Way. But I Really Liked Working Hard. When I Worked At Disneyland, I'd Do 12 Hours Straight And Go Home Thrilled.

A Father Carries Pictures Where His Money Used To Be.

I've Always Believed That There Are Funny People Everywhere, But They're Just Not Comedians. In Fact, Some Of My Best Comedic Inspirations Were Not Professional Entertainers.

She Had Destroyed Whatever Was Between Us By Making A Profound Gaffe: She Met Me.

I Really Like The Animated Film Process. It's Kind Of Like Doing A Play, Because You Can Experiment With It, Rewrite It, Screen It, Go Back, Then Work On It A Little Bit More. If The Joke Doesn't Work, You Can Fix It. It's Different From A Live Action Movie.

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.

A Kiss May Not Be The Truth, But It Is What We Wish Were True.

Introductions Are Hard To Come By When Your Natural State Is Shyness

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.

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?

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.

The Bluegrass Community... Can Be Very Strict. I Didn't Know If I'd Be Welcomed Into The Bluegrass Community Or Not, But I Think They Judge You Very Fairly... I Felt Really Welcome.

The Thing About The Banjo Is When You First Hear It, It Strikes Many People As What's That? There's Something Very Compelling About It To Certain People.

Whether I'm Involved In Creating Something Or Not, It's A Personal Issue Of Do I Respect It. But You Can Only Know That Five Or Ten Years Later.

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.

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.

As Much As I Remember, I Just Thought, I Want To Sing A Song That Starts Normal And Ends Crazy.

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.

The Banjo Is Such A Happy Instrument--you Can't Play A Sad Song On The Banjo - It Always Comes Out So Cheerful.

These Days It's Hard To Look At A Poodle Without Thinking What A Good Meal He Would Make.

Writing Is Extremely Personal, And That's The Joy Of It For Me.

Dinosaurs Did Not Walk With Humans. The Evolutionary Record Says Different. They Gambled.

I Happened To Take A Photo, And There Was My Wife, My Dog And My Banjo, All In The Same Shot - And I Thought, "oh, That's Like A Family Portrait Right There."

You Have To Get Comfortable [with Your Work], You Really Have To Know What You're Doing, And It Has To Be Almost Boring To You To Be Able To Do It Well.

...the Divided World Of Aspen, Where Locals With A Sense Of Entitlement Were Pitted Against Developers With A Sense Of Condominiums.

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!

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.

Lots Of Women Are Getting Involved. They're Not Satisfied Just Being Passengers Anymore.

It's Funny That Some Ideas Start With A Little "what If?" And Then Suddenly You're Spending A Million Dollars To Shoot The Scene And Hoping That It Works.

I Think I Meant That, Given The Circumstances Of My Childhood, I Had The Illusion That It's Easier To Be Alone. To Have Your Relationships Be Casual And Also To Pose As A Solitary Person, Because It Was More Romantic. You Know, I Was Raised On The Idea Of The Ramblin' Man And The Loner.

How To Make A Million Dollars: First, Get A Million Dollars

Comedians Don`t Get Oscars, So I Gave Up On That A Long Time Ago. And I Can`t Really Speak About The Oscar-worthiness Of My Own Performance.

Be Undeniably Good. When People Ask Me How Do You Make It In Show Business Or Whatever, What I Always Tell Them & Nobody Ever Takes Note Of It 'cause It's Not The Answer They Wanted To Hear-what They Want To Hear Is Here's How You Get An Agent, Here's How You Write A Script, Here's How You Do This-but I Always Say, “be So Good They Can't Ignore You.” If Somebody's Thinking, “how Can I Be Really Good?” People Are Going To Come To You. It's Much Easier Doing It That Way Than Going To Cocktail Parties.

I Like What A Third Man Brings. A Kind Of Oblique Vision, Seeing Something In The Material That You Didn't Know Was There. As A Comedian, I'm Always Listening To The Audience. And In Movies, Sometimes The Only Audience You Have Is The Producer And The Director. I Like Having Someone Else's Opinion, Especially If You're On The Same Wavelength.

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.

I've Heard Lots Of People Lie To Themselves But They Never Fool Anyone.

Acting Is Collaborative Because You Are Working With Another Actor, And It's Almost Like A Two-man Juggling Team. You Have To Really Be In Sync.

We've Taken What Was Just Once A Racetrack And Made It A Multifaceted Gaming Destination For The Entire Region.

When People Ask Me, ‘how Do You Make It In Show Business,’ Or Whatever, What I Always Tell Them — And Nobody Ever Takes Note Of It ‘cuz It’s Not The Answer They Wanted To Hear…but I Always Say, ‘be So Good They Can’t Ignore You.’

Halle Berry Is Here, Whose Win Last Year Broke Down Barriers For Unbelievably Hot Women.

Trending Author

Category