Talk:Steven Wright

I think a lot of these are misattributed. I know I've seen some of them attributed to Jack Handey. - 12.39.92.167 14:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, the official wiki page talks about that as well. Do any of these have citations?  I don't see anything on his official site which talks about which ones are his.
 * ~ender 2006-08-01 20:12:MST
 * Yes - about half of them don't sound like his material. This is damaging to both Steven Wright and whoever the material actually belongs to.  Maybe the page should be reworked from scratch.
 * The one about attacking the world without war is Jack Handey. I didn't see any others, but I only read about half of them.  All of the others I either didn't recognize or they are actually Steven Wright's (most of them I recognized, and the rest sounded like him).  Again, that's about the first half of the page.

Cleaned up
I deleted some 50 quotes or so that were misattributed, according to this website. Sad, because a lot of them were pretty dumb... "The sky fell. Now what?" Come on, that's not Steven's quality. 70.91.178.185 23:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Your deletions are much appreciated. The quotes should now be down to a mere 250 or so.  We're going to have to end up deleting a lot more besides in order to avoid potential copyright issues. If you have any suggestions on which remaining quotes could be trimmed, by all means let us know.  We would rather have people who are knowledgeable working on this than have to make reductions almost randomly.  - InvisibleSun 23:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There are many viral joke lists with Steven's name at the top that this page is suffering from. I just made some deletions of the obvious problems. It may be good to put the quotes from established sources (his album, specials, etc.) into groups and then delete everything else. It's hard to know whether he actually said many of these jokes, but we can limit it to what we know he said. Richard 12:32, 4-2-2007

Misattribution - psychokinesis quote
"All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand."

See origin info this saying at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cultural_references_to_psychokinesis_and_telekinesis

Trimming notice
As part of the Copyright Cleanup Project, this article has been trimmed to a maximum of five quotes for a standup performance. Additional quotations could be added so long as an equal number are deleted. See Limits on quotations for guidelines. - InvisibleSun 02:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

"You can't have everything; where would you put it?"

As a point of interest here, it is difficult to see how "Thanks!" can be termed a catch-phrase. It's even shorter than the term catch-phrase itself. Maybe Wright should think of something longer to say and give his audience better value?

A catchphrase does not have guidelines. When I read Catch-Phrase I immediately thought of Thanks. A Catch Phrase is something that is often repeated and creates an association with the person saying it. As far as audience value. He gets laughs whenever he comes out and says it. I laugh thinking of the time I saw him perform.

Unsourced

 * "Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."
 * "I wonder what Jesus ever did for Santa on his birthday."
 * "I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house, and four people died."
 * "I'm living on a one-way dead-end street. I don't know how I ever got there."
 * "Whenever I fill out an application and it says 'In case of an emergency notify...,' I put Doctor. What the hell is my mother gonna do?"
 * "I was arrested today for scalping low numbers at the deli. I sold a #3 for $28."
 * "I've been getting into astronomy so I installed a skylight. The people who live above me are furious."
 * "I went into this restaurant that serves you breakfast at any time, so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance."
 * "I wish my first word was 'quote', so when I die I could say 'un-quote'."
 * "I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the zebra did it."
 * "If it's a penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, someone's making a penny."
 * "I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second."
 * "I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone."
 * "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."
 * "Next week I'm gonna have an MRI to find out whether or not I have claustrophobia."
 * "They say you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. So I got rid of everything to see what I had."
 * "When I woke up, everything in my apartment had been stolen...and replaced with exact replicas. I asked my roommate what happened and he said 'Who are you?' "
 * "I woke up and couldn't find my socks. So I called Information.  She they said they were behind the couch."
 * "Do you think when they asked George Washington for his ID, he'd just pull out a quarter?"
 * "I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, "What for?" I said, "I'm going to buy some sugar."
 * "My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted."
 * "24-hour banking? I haven't got time for that."
 * "I went to a store that had a sign that said "Open 24 Hours" and it was closed...I asked the manager 'Why are you closing? It says you're open 24 hours.' He said 'Not in a row.'"
 * "So I'm driving along, being real careful 'cos its an old car and I installed my own airbags. I got an old bean bag chair, some laughing gas, and a compressor, so if I hit the accident just right I'll be floating up in the air laughing hysterically."
 * "So I said to the hitchhiker 'what do you do?' He said 'I'm a student'. I said 'a student of what?' He said he was studying journalism and photography, so I said 'that's funny, I'm actually writing a short story about a photographer who went completely insane trying to take a close up photo of the horizon.'"
 * "You know when someone reads a letter in the movies and you always hear what's written in the voice of the person who wrote the letter? Yeah, that kills me. In fact I get the same thing with menus."
 * I was driving along when I saw a hitchhiker holding a sign that said "heaven", so I hit him. He probably went there.  He seemed like a nice guy.
 * I'd like to do my imitation of bowling. (Drags the microphone across the stage floor, then whips it upwards.) Gutter. It took me a year and a half to write that.  I didn't know how to word it.
 * "This next song doesn't go 'something' like this; it goes 'exactly' like this."
 * "My uncle once told me when I was five, 'When I was your age, I was six.'"
 * "Last night I was in a restaurant called Bulimia's. The line for the bathroom was incredible."
 * "I was driving along a road and saw a gas station with two signs on top of one another. "Help Wanted", "Self Service". So I hired myself. Made myself the boss. Took all the money and left"

How do you attribute these when you hear them on the radio? I heard some of these on Sirius' Raw Dog station just last night. Over the years, I've heard almost all of these at one time or another, either from TV appearances or on the radio. Most of these are widely known to be Steven Wright lines.


 * If you can provide details on the original clips where the quote was made, that's all that's required. Perhaps contacting Sirius' Raw Dog station? However, many such as the skylight quote can be sourced from this book published in 1996. Also available for loan here. But there is some evidence many of these quotes came from the eighties, or even earlier, and it also seems as if audio is the only media available for source.--Lmstearn (talk) 04:00, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

--R. S. Shaw (talk) 22:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm". Sometimes given as "Depression is anger without enthusiasm".

Slashdot Tip of the Day
According to Slashdot's tip of the day the following quote can be attributed to Steven Wright
 * "I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and 4 people died."

Zellfaze (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2013 (UTC)