Quotes & Jokes by David Steinberg
The interesting thing about improvisation is you're making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that'll separate you from the audience.
You get to a philosophy after a while that everything is sort of cycling in a way. You know I have a sort of capsulized philosophy that your success is so relative. When you’re a baby success is not wetting your bed. When you’re a teenager success is going all the way. When you’re a young man success is making money. When you are middle aged success is being happy. When you’re an old man success is going all the way. And when you’re really old it’s not wetting your bed.
My father never lived to see his dream come true of an all-Yiddish-speaking Canada.
I used to have a theory that I took almost through all the presidencies. And it was that you're either - it's like the Three Stooges. You're either a Moe, who's in charge, or a Larry, who wants to be a Moe, or you're Curly, who is nuts and totally just off the page.
A lot of young people make the mistake of going into comedy just because it's a lucrative business, as opposed to earlier, even Steven and I, we were in 'Second City,' we never... thought of going beyond 'Second City' in Chicago.
You can’t be comfortable in whatever that societal group is – kindergarten, school, basketball, whatever. You have to have an outsider point of view.
The only reason I feel guilty about masturbation is because I do it so badly.
Being a lawyer in New York sucks because you're working eighty, sometimes a hundred hours a week.
When I got to stand-up, having seen Lenny Bruce when I was 17 or 18, I didn’t laugh at all at what he did, but I could not get over the storytelling aspect. They were concepts that challenged you.
The whole idea of doing the Hollywood thing never even occurred to me. When you grow up on the East coast, Hollywood seems like this fantasy land and you don't think that people can actually make a living there.
The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.
When I talk to Steve Martin, he's joyful when he talks about comedy.
I don't really dissect comedy. Nothing kills off humor more than overanalyzing it.
When I started, you didn't make a lot of money by being a comedian. You didn't get a lot of respect.