Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'
— Steven Wright
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 have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I've read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it's the same.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.
To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life.
I don't like politicians, and I don't like politics. I definitely don't want to be associated with any of them.
When I was 16... I worked in a pet store. And they fired me because... they had three snakes in there, and one day I braided them.
I laugh all the time - at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don't laugh onstage because then it's serious business.
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.
If I ever had twins, I'd use one for parts.
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.
My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I'm much more expressive off stage.
Sometimes I wish my first word was 'quote,' so that on my death bed, my last words could be 'end quote.'
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.
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?'
It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.
One day a guy tried to rob me on the street, and I had no money. So I charged him.
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.
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
All those who believe in psychokinesis - raise my hand.
I'm addicted to placebos.
When I die, I'm gonna leave my body to science fiction.
My secret to staying young... Having no sense of time.
I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed-reading accident. I hit a bookmark.
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.
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?'
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.
I thought I would be a guy on the radio.
I'm going to get an MRI to find out whether I have claustrophobia.
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.
Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it's dangerous.
I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I'm an idiot.
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.
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.'
I've been thinking of humorous things since I was... I can't remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.
If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
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.
You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That's what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.
I just have a relationship with my imagination. It's like my friend, almost.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I paint; I draw and paint - I've been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.
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.'
They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.
Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.
I didn't want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.
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.
