Steven Wright
What's another word for Thesaurus?Collection: Funny
I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Money
Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.Collection: Home
There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.Collection: Power
I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.Collection: Car
Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don't get it.
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.
George Carlin's album, 'Class Clown,' came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I'd come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don't even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.
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.
When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?
I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically.
My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I'm much more expressive off stage.
I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.
My secret to staying young... Having no sense of time.
I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose.
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 was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.
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.
It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.
Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can't predict what people will laugh at.
Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it's dangerous.
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.'
My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut - he's my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don't really remember what we talked about.
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.
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.
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.
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 don't get up, get dressed, go out, and think, 'Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.'
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.
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.
I laugh all the time - at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don't laugh onstage because then it's serious business.
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.
Don't you hate when your hand falls asleep and you know it will be up all night.
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?'
One day a guy tried to rob me on the street, and I had no money. So I charged him.
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.'
Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.
To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life.
At one point he decided enough was enough.
It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.
I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.
I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don't.
I didn't want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.
It's very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that's not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It's a gut feeling.
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.
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.
If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?
I got a chain letter by fax. It's very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.