Steve Martin

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.

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.

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.

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.

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

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

I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was... an arctic wilderness.

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.

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

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.

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

Well, excuuuuuse me!

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.

I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

I don't think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You're always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it'll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it's always meant to be something. So, to me, there's no practicing; there's only editing and publishing or not publishing.

When your hobbies get in the way of your work — that's OK; but when your hobbies get in the way of themselves... well.

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

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

You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.