I resigned from television writing against the advice of my agent, a man who had wisely vacuumed up all the young talent discovered by the Smothers Brothers. He said plainly, “Stick to writing.” Which was a polite way of saying that my performing was headed nowhere. I took this warning with a strange delight. It was, in a way, the necessary ingredient in any young career, like when Al Jolson was told in The Jazz Singer, “Jolie, you’ll never become a sing-gah!”
—Steve Martin, “Television,” Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, p. 129, 2007.
