I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.
Interpretation
This quote humorously expresses frustration with excessive wordiness in communication.
Steve Martin's quote highlights the importance of brevity in communication, suggesting that sometimes, simplicity and efficiency are more effective than using many words to convey a message. By emphasizing the use of proper punctuation over unnecessary letters, it reflects a playful disdain for verbosity and encourages clear expression.
In practice
This quote could be used in a writing workshop to encourage participants to focus on concise expression.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.
Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'.
When I'm up there, I'm just thinking that I've got to make them laugh or they won't show up next time.
Every comedian comes to a fork in the road where they have to decide if they're going to make jokes about other people or make jokes about themselves. I chose myself.
It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.
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