I Must Say Quotes

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Everything remains as it was. The old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no sorrow in your tone. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Henry, I know it seems unimaginable, but you are being empowered tonight,” I told him. “You are being given something that is horrible, but is also a life lesson. This will make you stronger. This will make you more determined. You’ll be in your office somewhere, someday, and some pompous asshole will say something to you. And you’ll supposedly be upset, and you’ll supposedly be fearful of your boss’s reaction. But then you’ll think, ‘This is gravy. This is fine. I couldn’t care less about this prick. I’m not upset now. I was upset the night my mother died.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“To my beloved friends, there’s simply no life without you guys. Thanks for the advice and the love and the billion dinners and laughs. Without you all . . . I’d look for new friends and get them.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“my happiness was never predicated first and foremost upon my career. It’s an outlook that has served me well.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Canada is a sparsely populated nation, a mere 34 million people across a vast expanse of land. Consequently, as you grow up there, you encounter more weirdos who have been given a wider berth to stew in their weirdness and become gloriously eccentric. These are precisely the kinds of folks who served as our comic muses in Toronto. On top of this, the performers in Second City Toronto were a particularly nice, un-mean group,”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“As I write this, I am sixty-four years old, with, I hope, many more years to live and lots more to do. And, by the way, no face work. I know you’re thinking, “No kidding.” But cosmetic surgery just doesn’t work on a man. Were I to take the plunge, no one would ever say, “Whoa, who’s that really hot thirty-eight-year-old dude?” They’d say, “Who’s that sixty-four-year-old who’s been in a fire?” Being”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“This lesson is, I suppose, a major reason I wrote this book: because along the way I’ve picked up the wisdom that bad things happen, and yet the sun still comes up the next day, and it’s up to you to carry on living your life and keeping your setbacks in perspective. You also have to understand that on some level, these horrible and sad things happen to everyone; the mark of a man is not just how he survives it all but also what wisdom he’s gained from the experience.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Da problem with today’s songwriters is, dey’re just ripping off what I did years ago. “Send In da Clowns”? I wrote da same tune back in 1910 under the title “Send Up Some Towels.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“everything from Hairspray to the Academy Awards. They were also my co-conspirators on my 2006 Broadway show, Fame”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Bye! . . . Love you! . . . Call me!” After she’d hung up, I asked her, “Who was that?” and Gilda said, “Wrong number.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“I almost wrote lyrics for this tune, but realized that lyrics were somehow, mysteriously, implied. It is dedicated to the memory of Nancy Short, whose vitality and love of laughter made elegies easy but grief doubly hard.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Nora’s e-mailed response was, “Oh, Kathleen . . . How could I ever say no to you—and yet I have.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“I decided that, as a stand-up, I’d position myself as a cerebral, observational comic, making references to Camus and Kierkegaard. I wasn’t so much concerned with getting laughs as I was with seeing audience members turn to each other at any given moment and say, “Exactly!”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“We arranged to spend the next day, a Sunday, looking at apartments together, followed by a round of tennis, since we both played. Before Nancy left the Pilot that night, I said to her lasciviously— I don’t know what possessed me—“Have you ever tried a comedian before?” Which was either very sexy or very creepy, depending on your opinion of me. She just stared at me, betraying no emotion, and said, “I hope you have a racket. I’m pretty good.” Our”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“What I discovered, through Ed, was that I simply needed to commit: to not worry about jokes. The reaction seemed to get the biggest laughs, not the action. I didn’t need to be a stand-up comedian delivering punch lines. If I just sincerely devoted myself to Ed’s panic with every fiber of my being, the audience would commit to him.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“survives it all but also what wisdom he’s gained from the experience. My cheerfulness on TV talk shows isn’t faked, but it is also far from the product of a life gone perfectly.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“strengthen you against further adversity. This lesson is, I suppose, a major reason I wrote this book: because along the way I’ve picked up the wisdom that bad things happen, and yet the sun still comes up the next day, and it’s up to you to carry on living your life and keeping your setbacks in perspective. You also have to understand that on some level, these horrible and sad things happen to everyone; the mark of a man is not just how he”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“life lesson. This will make you stronger. This will make you more determined. You’ll be in your office somewhere, someday, and some pompous asshole will say something to you. And you’ll supposedly be upset, and you’ll supposedly be fearful of your boss’s reaction. But then you’ll think, ‘This is gravy. This is fine. I couldn’t care less about this prick. I’m not upset now. I was upset the night my mother died.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“You see, Nan, it’s like I always told you: it’s better to have loved a Short than never to have loved a tall.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“We had season tickets to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, and, as only we Canadians can say, we had prime seats right on the fifty-five-yard line. And”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Ah, Clifford—what to make of it? Let’s see: poor box office, bad studio karma, critical excoriation . . . all the prerequisites for a cult hit.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“You know, speaking from experience, I can tell you that there’s no aphrodisiac more potent than Watergate-themed cabaret music.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“a unique (some would say “off”) comedic voice. What we all learned at Second City was to trust the concept that our comedy wasn’t about jokes. Rather, it was about situations and characters—the peculiar moments that we encounter in life, the peculiar people that we meet, and how we (and they) react to these moments and meetings.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“I’m Dhani Harrison,” he said. “One of the last things my father told me was that if I ever come across people who were important to him, I should give them a hug.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“He seemed to know every minuscule detail of the life and work of Bob Hope (and even then did the note-perfect Hope impersonation he’d later bring to SCTV), yet he was also fluent in the intricacies of Shakespeare’s entire catalog of plays.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

“Godspell is, essentially, the gospel according to Matthew as told by clowns—as sung, really, by hippie Jesus and his hippie apostles in a wildly original rock-opera musical idiom. Paul Shaffer has long said that in the early 1970s, the theatrical community was obsessed with two things: “full-frontal nudity and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Godspell, mercifully, fit only the latter description.”
― Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend