Steve Martin Quotes

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

I think you can go from being not very funny to working really hard for 10 years and figuring out how to make a living on the road, but I don't think you can rise much above that.

I spent 25 years as a stand-up comedian.

I never knew if I would get my own show, but I knew I loved stand-up.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

You know, my first album, some of those jokes I'd done for twelve years because I couldn't throw 'em out.

Any standup that you see who you go, 'Oh, wow, that guy's, you know, that guy's making it.' Inevitably, they've been doing it 10, 12 years - 10, 15 years. Because it takes time.

People who want to do stand-up from the start - I mean that's an extremely self-centred thing to want, isn't it?

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

I started going to the open mics every day in 2003. You make the comics laugh, they get you work, and you build up your reputation. It was a slow process.

You can succeed as a terrible director, but try doing that with stand-up: try being a terrible comedian and getting up on stage. The funny will win out very, very quickly.

I never really watched much stand-up growing up. I just was not really that into it. But I can say I honestly fell in love with it the second I touched the microphone. It was like this weird thing where it's like, 'Oh, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do.'

I decided I'd try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You're Funny competition.

I did so many open mics. I would write jokes on Twitter constantly, and then slowly, over time, open mics turned into shows. If you can get a joke to work at an open mic, it's a good joke.

I've been performing stand-up comedy for ten years, it's what I love and will always do.

I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.

When I went into Bobby's World, I had no idea it would be a success. I had been doing the Bobby voice as part of my nightclub adult act for years.

I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

When I do any stand-up, you're the writer, director, and producer. You're alone.

I'd been acting and doing stand-up in New York about eight years, getting rejected, and I finally got the opportunity to do stand-up on Letterman, which holds even more importance for me. With comedians, that's definitely the pinnacle, but being from Indiana, it was a big to-do.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.