"The few hours I spent in the clubs and coffeehouses seemed like a full existence."

"It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances."

"Teaching is, after all, a form of show business."

"This book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a death."

Darkness is essential: If light is thrown on the audience, they don't laugh; I might as well have told them to still and be quiet.

"The comedian's slang for a successful show is "I murdered them," which I'm sure came about because you finally realize that the audience is capable of murdering you."

"Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do."

"I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspirations."

"I could not sing or dance, and the only acting I did was really just shouting. Thankfully perseverence is a great substitute for talent."

"Any new social philosophy is good for creativity."

"I felt that a career in the irrational world of creativity not only made sense but had moral purpose."

"Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening."

"Celebrities want fame when it's useful and don't when it's not. That argument is absolutely true."

"Movies were social; stand-up was antisocial."

"In psychoanalysis, you try to retain a discovery; in art, once the thing is made, you let it go."

"Doing comedy alone onstage is the ego's last stand."

Quotes from one of the greatest multihyphenates of all time, Steve Martin.

Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.

STEVE MARTIN

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GLORIA STEINEM

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