Many stand-up comedians who rise to household-name popularity tend to get their name out through yearly (or at least semi-regular) album releases, TV specials, books and whatever else might help spread the word. Not so much for the dry and droll Steven Wright, who has become a bonafide comedy icon despite only releasing two albums and three specials across a career spanning 40+ years. Part of Wright’s legacy is due to his occasional appearances in cult classics such as The Larry Sanders Show and Half-Baked, but it’s largely due to his signature style of brilliant one-liners and deadpan observations that are steeped in irony, wordplay and surrealism.
Making his first appearance of many on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1982 — at least one of which can be streamed with a Peacock subscription — Steven Wright became something of a late night staple over the years, which was pretty much the only place for fans to hear his new jokes and head-scratching musings between the release of 1985’s I Have a Pony and 2006’s When The Leaves Blow Away. No need to turn on any TVs or to scour the Internet, however, as we’ve rounded up a bunch of the Oscar winner’s funniest one-liners.
"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
Even if you had a bag that was big enough to put everything else inside of it, where would you put that bag?
"I xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra xerox machine."
Steven Wright has several jokes about sci-fi-esque ramifications that come from making copies, but this is easily my favorite. A few questions: How much ink would that have taken? Has this joke lost any relevance in a world where 3D printing is commonplace? Who's the youngest person in the U.S. who knows what Xerox means?
"It's a good thing we have gravity or else when birds died they'd just stay right up there. Hunters would be all confused."
This winner of a joke is the equivalent of saying, "Look, a dead bird!" amongst friends, with the goal of poking fun at whoever mistakenly looked up to the sky instead of on the ground.
"I lost a buttonhole."
My personal all-time favorite Steven Wright one-liner. Like a two-sentence horror story, it's all about the brevity, and he earns all the slow claps here. Extra credit goes to the occasional follow-up line, "Where am I gonna find a buttonhole?"
"I bought a house on a one-way, dead-end road. I don't know how I got there."
On a road trip many years ago, while driving down a dark and spooky frontage road in the middle of the night, I went through a moment of fearful confusion where I thought the one-way came to a dead end, which of course seemed patently ludicrous two seconds later. But that upside-down feeling never really left, and this joke encapsulates it.
"Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish."
Steven Wright has talked about Salvador Dali being one of his heroes (via the Phoenix New Times)
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"When I turned 2, I was really anxious, because I'd doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I'm 6 I'll be 90."
That math doesn't totally add up for anyone whose brain has grown beyond that of a two-year-old, but every time I arrive at the correct answer, I picture what 6-year-old Steven Wright would look like with a 90-year-old's features, and all math becomes irrelevant.
"I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row.'"
How can you argue with that kind of logic, or lack thereof? I wonder how expiration dates work in that store.
"I stayed up one night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died."
Definitely not the same line-up as Wild Bill Hickock's "Dead Man's Hand," but no less effective.
"I went to a fancy French restaurant called Deja Vu. The headwaiter said, 'Don't I know you?'"
Another A+ joke of his pertaining to deja vu involves him experiencing that and amnesia at the same time, inspiring the punchline: "I think I've forgotten this before." Thankfully, no matter how many times fans hear Steven Wright's jokes, they never get less funny.
"You know how it is when you're reading a book and falling asleep, you're reading, reading... And all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I'm like that all the time."
While Wright doesn't exactly overuse any specific formats when crafting his one-liners, he does occasionally lean into ideas like the one above, in which he compares his sense of being to a largely intangible expression or feeling. Another favorite involves him describing the feeling of almost falling over when leaning back in a chair.
"My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere."
I don't recall getting a lamp shaped like an elephant where the lampshade only sits on top it, and the lamp doesn't even emit light. Wait, I see what happened here...
"I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance."
No word on how that meal turned out, but I bet it was magnifique with sacrebleu-berry syrup.
"I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time."
Where we're going, we don't need mugs. For those who aren't into going backwards or forwards through time, I also suggest avoiding the 88 beans-per-hour brew.
"I was in the first submarine. Instead of a periscope, they had a kaleidoscope. 'We're surrounded.'"
I can't tell if Steven Wright's laidback demeanor would be a boon or a hindrance within a submarine surrounded by enemy vessels. Leave 'em laughing is always a good motto.
"I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone."
The phrase "spot remover" possibly dates this joke as much as the use of Spot as a name, but the idea is timeless. As is another of Wright's pet-related jokes about naming his dog Stay.
"Today, I was... No, that wasn't me."
This is Steven Wright anti-humor at his best, and it makes me giggle thinking about how often comedians launch into fabricated stories just for the sake of making a joke work. Even if that wasn't the impetus of the joke, it still applies.
"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you."
There presumably aren't many people in the world who have a lot of experience with failing at skydiving. Not a very good life goal, in any case.
"I have the oldest typewriter in the world. It types in pencil."
A typewriter that typed in pencil would be pretty amazing as far as making corrections goes. Someone should have marketed this, and probably still can.
"Smoking cures weight problems...eventually."
Though many of Steven Wright's jokes are silly and non-consequential, the jokes he makes that skew a little darker always feel that much more ominous when he delivers them.
"I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn't have to go so fast."
All of the jokes that have been made about NASCAR and racing as a sport, this is easily my favorite, because it's silly and non-judgmental. Or at least not judgmental of anyone who knows how to leave on time.
"Sometimes you can’t hear me; it’s because sometimes I’m in parentheses."
While perhaps not the most obviously influential joke, some high school friends and I definitely would joke about being in parentheses during quiet moments.
"Why is it a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in? Somebody’s making a penny."
Save up some of those pennies, and one can go and get the psychiatric advice of one Lucy Van Pelt, whose two cents in will set patients back five.
"I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They went, 'Aaahhh...'"
As it goes with other Wright one-liners, the logic behind this scenario leaves much to be desired, but once you get beyond the suspension of disbelief, it's hilarious turtles all the way down.
"The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing."
There's probably a version of this joke where the Bermuda Triangle moved up to the Arctic Circle. But then maybe it would have been SpongeBob SquarePants that went missing.
"I took a course in speed-reading. Then I got Reader's Digest on microfilm. By the time I got the machine set up, I was done."
This joke, in a not-altogether-current nutshell, speaks to why Steven Wright has been such a beloved comedian for this many years. You don't need to have any context for courses in speed-reading, nor any knowledge of what microfilm is, nor any history with Reader's Digest. And yet the joke still lands in the same unexpected way, because it's actually about impossible circumstances, which are universal to all.
"On the other hand, you have different fingers."
Like a picture that appears to be one thing, and then looks like something else when viewed from a different perspective, this joke is either tautological obviousness, or a sage thought to spend time mulling over. Or, if you move your head back and forth a bunch while squinting, it can be both.
"I used to work for the factory where they make hydrants, but you couldn't park anywhere near the place."
Of all the faux former occupations that Steven Wright has claimed to have for the sake of his jokes, I love this everyday-blasé reference to a fire hydrant factory. I don't think I've ever heard of such a place, though I guess they must exist. Nobody's putting hydrants together by hand.
"When I first moved into my house, there was a switch on the wall that didn't control the lights or anything. I'd just flick it up and down every once in a while. Then about a month later, I got a letter from a woman in Germany, saying, 'Cut it out.'"
This joke very much feels like the inspiration for the mysterious light switch inside Monica's apartment on Friends, considering it's the same set-up, just without any German women sending snail mail correspondence. Granted, many houses and apartment buildings are known to have wall switches that were never hooked up, or were handled erroneously, but I still prefer to believe Steven Wright and Friends are connected.
"I was Cesarean-born. You can’t really tell, although whenever I leave a house, I go out through the window."
This joke speaks not only to Steven Wright's origins, but also might offer insight into anyone else you know that exclusively exits buildings through windows. It's a whole other conversation when it comes to the ones that readily enter buildings for the first time through windows.
"I was thinking about the new phone that I bought, and the first thing I did was push redial. The phone had a nervous breakdown."
Just because an object is inanimate and non-sentient doesn't mean it's completely free from anxiety. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of Steven Wright's belongings carry an innate pang of anxiousness over the idea that he might swoop in and use them to break reality for the sake of fiction.
"You know how it is when you decide to lie and say the check is in the mail, and then you remember it really is? I'm like that all the time."
Does it take away the sting of someone lying if it later turns out that person was unwittingly telling the truth? Probably not, since motivations are everything. Whatever that feeling is in between, where there's guilt for fibbing mixed in with relief, that's just Steven Wright. And we love him for it.
