Steve Martin

Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.

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.

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.

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I'm not going to tell you what they are but if I had a list of all my films right now I'd go 'Okay I'll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.' Really. But I've made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

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.

I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do period.

I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.

I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

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.

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art and can become art but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100 000 that means 100 000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical but it didn't turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100 000 four of them were interested in my book.

I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it.

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.

There's a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There's a lot of sex, you know, in art. There's a lot of naked women and men and there's intrigue there's fakery. It's a real microcosm of the larger world.

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.

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.

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.

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.