Steve Martin Quotes

Real answers need to be found in dialogue and interaction and, yes, our shared human condition. This means being open to one another instead of simply fighting to maintain a prescribed position.

When he would give you direction, it was not sitting in a chair saying, 'Hey, babe! Do this and that and the other thing.' Mr. Sirk would ask, 'May I speak with you?' and sit down and say, 'I think this should be done this way. And how do you feel about it? Do you feel it that way?'

Having really good ideas comes from being able to listen to everybody else and see what their ideas are, because they're coming from a completely different place. That's always been important. It's part of being in a band.

Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.

The book is not completely written until someone else has read it.

I like working with directors because I'm really opinionated about what things work and may not work, what audiences like and may not like, (not really) but I do have opinions about things. I like to be able to say them and then have them acted on. The director who responds to me like that, always gets my appreciation. I do appreciate it. What I find is the best directors, no matter what kind of name they have, are like that.

Ultimate truth, if there be such a thing, demands the concert of many voices.

When you're working with other artists, it's often a mix of your ideas with somebody else's, which can be extremely fruitful. But then it's also interesting to present the completely undiluted vision of what I imagine music could be. I care about both my own music and collaboration equally, and I pretty much split my time equally, as well.

Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table. If they are not at the table, we don’t benefit from their crumb.

Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall.

Every creative person can draft into service those around them who exhibit the right mixture of intelligence, insight, and grace.

I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboration: If it's faster than me by myself, then it works. If it's slower than me by myself, then I get out of the room.

Working with (new collaborators) and letting people in to try new melodies and new lyrical ideas was very hard.

To understand one another, and to grow in charity and truth, we need to pause, to accept and listen to one another. In this way we already begin to experience unity. Unity grows along the way, it never stands still. Unity happens when we walk together.

I've told Michael Jackson jokes. If you got really technical, you could say those are jokes about child molestation. You could, if you got technical. A lot of this is just selective outrage because honestly, the audience are the ones that tell us that something shouldn't be spoken. The audience lets us know. And I've never, in my almost 30 years of being a comedian, seen a comedian continue to tell a joke that the audience doesn't respond to. I've never seen it.

You need a team that speaks your language.

If a director can find the exact combination between the written word as a guideline and improvisational input from his actors, I think that's where you'll find the most successful work being done.

One of my philosophies as a director is to listen to other people's great ideas because they'll help make you better.

One of the nice things about being in a band is that you depend on each other for ideas, so it's not all up to me to do everything myself. There's always that fear that you'll run out of stuff. The most difficult part for me is writing lyrics, and that starts to get difficult after you've written, like, 120 songs.

In dialogue, individuals gain insights that simply could not be achieved individually.

John Kricfalusi is very talented; he used to really piss me off. But I did good work, you know? The Ren & Stimpy show without me was totally unsuccessful. So if there's anybody listening out there with any doubts about what I can do for a show: Try me. The thing is, I wasn't about to stop doing a job.

Writers get to know me very well. It always serves me in the end because I feel I have a deeper understanding of the character and sometimes they really like my ideas and they use them.

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn't meet blockhead until about '94. I started making beats not until about '96.

As an actor, you're only one little piece of the puzzle; you're fulfilling someone else's vision. If you're involved earlier on, you're kind of creating your own.