Steven Wright

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said 'No, I made a few mistakes.'

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time... I think I've forgotten this before.

Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.

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.

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

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen.

I went to a general store but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.

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.

You know when you're sitting on a chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.

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 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’m so tired... I was up all night trying to round off infinity.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'

Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

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 remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'

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

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.

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