Top 544 Quotes & Sayings by Steven Wright - Page 3

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don't get it.

I didn't want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?

I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, 'You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.'

The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, 'Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.'

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I'm much more expressive off stage.

Comedians are sociologists. We're pointing out stuff that the general public doesn't even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

When I was on TV in the '80s, I wasn't thinking, 'There's a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he's gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.' I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they're influenced by me - it's bizarre.

I've been doing comedy longer than I haven't been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on 'The Tonight Show.' There's truly nothing like it; it's intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.

There's something about being in front of a live audience that's fun. It's a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can't get it anywhere else. And I've been doing it since I was 23, so it's part of my being - it's part of my fabric as a person.

I like George Carlin's jokes. I like his humor. He's one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

My mother is from another time - the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that's what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn't know what I'm talking about. I know if I wasn't her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

Childhood was very nice. The only thing wrong was that I was so introverted, everything became a big deal... 'Oh, no, here comes the bus. Where am I gonna sit on the bus?'

When I die, I'm gonna leave my body to science fiction.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the 'Boston Phoenix,' and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that's where I first saw 'deadpan.'

I didn't tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn't happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.

I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That's still what I am doing. The end.

I like to talk about lint and coasters, the expansion of the universe and maybe McDonald's. I'm completely turned off by the idea of politics.

It seems like we wake up and it's a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, 'What the hell am I doing?'

I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge... you can't hear him talk.

I laugh all the time - at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don't laugh onstage because then it's serious business.

It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

I'm seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There's no black and white to it. But sometimes I'm seeing it like I'm 4.

What I like about the jokes, to me it's a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won't be funny.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I'm really thinking about.

When I'm on stage, it's really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It's funny how different it looks and how it's happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I'm going to get a bagel.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won't die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn't have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn't want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it's dangerous.

The things I talk about and explain couldn't happen - yet, they don't seem impossible - you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane - and it's trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn't investigated. They might find that I don't really exist - that I'm just a hologram.

I don't get up, get dressed, go out, and think, 'Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.'

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I'm very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I'm feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It's gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

I got a chain letter by fax. It's very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

To the audience, it's like I'm changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show's almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

I've always had to conquer fear when I'm on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It's absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I'm okay. It's like I'm out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn't give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn't seem right.

It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.

I'm addicted to placebos.

When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?

Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.

I don't feel that I'm explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I'm not trying to be a mirror, showing them what's really going on the world. All I'm trying to do is think of stuff that's funny, just like when I'm kidding around with my friends.

I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night - and I'd dream about it being me.

I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn't have to go so fast.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I'm not an improv guy. I'm a writer-guy who presents what he's written.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you'd get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it's hard work, almost harder once you're successful because you've got to maintain it.

I'm used to seeing it, but it's weird having an Academy Award. You usually only see one of them on the TV show when they give them out, so it's kind of surreal to have one in your house.

One day a guy tried to rob me on the street, and I had no money. So I charged him.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

If I ever had twins, I'd use one for parts.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It's like my friend, almost.

I'm standing behind a wall of jokes. You don't know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I'm not on the road. There's this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don't know anything about me.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won't be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don't wear a hat, there's no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I don't go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it's contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.