No Business Like Show Business Quotes & Sayings

My family's been in show business since the 1700s. I traced them. I'm bred to this. Like a racehorse. A thoroughbred. Look at my parents, my God. But it was my curiosity that made me do this. Because you could also say: "Look at Frank Sinatra Jr." It's not like a natural thing that happens. You gotta work. — Liza Minnelli

I totally understand the promotional aspect of our show and the business end of it. We're putting something out there that we're really proud of. It's not like we're saying, "Hey, come watch our show," because it sucks. — Angie Harmon

People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed. — Bill Bryson

I fell in love with Bruce Lee after I watched his movies, and I wanted to become a kung-fu practicer, and I would like to be someone like Bruce Lee. That's why I learned kung-fu, and that's why I picked the wing chun style, because it's his style. That's why I decided to be an actor, to go into show business, because of him. — Stephen Chow

Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that's the angels' pasture; they are happy; they don't have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church. — Jacques Roumain

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether. — Neil Postman

The Beatles first appeared on our show on February 9, 1964, and I have never seen any scenes to compare with the bedlam that was occasioned by their debut. Broadway was jammed with people for almost eight blocks. They screamed, yelled, and stopped traffic. It was indescribable ... There has never been anything like it in show business, and the New York City police were very happy it didn't - and wouldn't - happen again. — Ed Sullivan

If there's any business that instructs you in the strong hand of fate, it's show business. You can plan and plan, but it's what happens to you that really determines what your career will be like. — Sam Waterston

I don't like people who are in politics for themselves and not for others. You want that, you can go into show business. — Elvis Presley

In Hollywood they say there's no business like show business. In the hood they say there's no business like ho' business. — Curtis Jackson

Rayna found a makeover show on TV-one of those where they sneak up on unsuspecting people going about their business, accost them with camera, and tell them they look like crap in front of a zillion people, making them cry, then build them back up with a new makeup job they won't be able to replicate and outfits so intricate they'll never remember how to fit them together.
It was perfect. — Hilary Duff

There's no business like show business. — Irving Berlin

I think I'm great. I mean, I might as well come out and say it. Like most people, I have an ego and I'm in show business, so you have to have kind of a healthy, conflagrated ego to a degree. On the other hand, I'm consumed, like a lot of people, with self-doubt and loathing and guilt. — Loudon Wainwright III

I'd still like to see 'Survivor' minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business - I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else's foot. — Albert Brooks

NBC's pilot season of 1994 is legendary in the business. In a world where failure is commonplace, we midwifed the birth of both 'Friends' and 'ER'. While 'ER' came essentially out of the blue, we'd been casting around for a 'Friends'-like show for some time at the network. — Warren Littlefield

I always say that I love magic but I hate magicians. I like being fooled. If you wave your hands in front of my face and I think you're doing a trick, I'm easily impressed. If you pull a quarter out of my ear, I'm quite certain you're a wizard. But I don't like the way most magicians don't act like they're magical; they act like show business dicks. — Greg Behrendt

I am constantly asked why I never made other films after 'There's No Business Like Show Business,' the answer is I was never asked. — Johnnie Ray

If you're going to be honest with yourself, you have to admit that you go into show business wanting people to talk about you and wanting everyone to know who you are. But that also means there are going to be a whole bunch of people who don't like you. No matter who you are. — Ellen DeGeneres

Just like every kid who comes into show business on some level, I used to put shows on in my basement. I even started with doing tricks and having a ventriloquist dummy. — Don Scardino

I am kind of a private person, so I don't miss that part of show business at all. Looking back on my career in television and making a movie like 'The Sound of Music' from an adult point of view, it actually seems kind of unreal. I was involved in shows that people grew up with - that hold memories for them - and it's a cool feeling. — Angela Cartwright

There's no damn business like show business - you have to smile to keep from throwing up. — Billie Holiday

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close. — Ronald Reagan

Show business is just like high school, except you get paid. — Martin Mull

Show business is like Champagne. You'll appreciate it more if you don't drink it everyday — Jay Leno

I'll just stay in [show business] till they stuff me like Trigger, when I drop dead. — Debbie Reynolds

Maddie had seen commercials for Match Made Easy on TV. They seemed like a decent business and legit. She hoped. She prayed they weren't out of her price range. Not that it mattered - time was running out. She'd pay anything to prove to her family she wasn't cursed. Plus, Ryan would be there, most likely with that cheating blonde of his. She bet anything they'd both love to see her at her lowest point: jobless and dateless. Well, no one was going to feel sorry for her. Not her cousin and certainly not the best man, either. She'd show them all. And since she couldn't find a wedding date to her sister's wedding on her own, it looked as if she'd be forced to do the next best thing. Hire one. — Jennifer Shirk

If you're in the WWE, it's like show business boot camp. You learn a little bit about everything as far as show business is involved. — Chris Jericho

I'm in show business. I'm not like a poor factory worker who'd been laid off. — Woody Allen

The summer I turned eleven, I found out that ghosts are real.
Guess it's hard to rest nice and easy in your coffin if you got stuff on your mind. Your soul stays chained to earth instead of zipping up to heaven to sing in one of the angel choirs.
Sometimes ghosts show up in the msot peculiar places.
Sometimes ghosts fool you.
Then you are those ghosts that hang around because we have unfinished business. Business that sinks like old crawfish left in a bucket for a week. That's some nasty smell let me tell you.
But the most important thing I learned is that ghosts can help you spill your guts before guilt eats you up and leaves a hole that can't ever be fixed no matter how many patches you try to steam iron across it. — Kimberley Griffiths Little

People in show business who are interested in politics, like Ronald Reagan, fare so well because they do know the magic of dealing with the public. This is something that can't be taught in a book. If they can produce after they've won over the public. If you can live up to your ballyhoo, you've got it made. — Liberace

I think the show has sort of given me a name in this business and allowed a lot of people the opportunity to see what I can do, and it's just sort of like a sweet starting point. — Shiri Appleby

So there's a cloud of rage around me, but being an artist kind of changes that. No matter what you thought coming in, what ignorant thing you believed, you're in show business for two years, you're like, "OK, I was wrong." It's hard to be mad at any particular group of people when you're an artist. — Chris Rock

Whatsa mattah allee time talkee talk bear business? Me no savvee bear business. You no like this Gloddam show, you go somewhere else. — Charles G. Finney

There is no business like show business. There is also no business like certified public accounting, but that doesn't rhyme as well. — Craig Shaw Gardner

I don't want anyone else but sometimes, surprisingly, there's someone, not the prettiest or the most available, but you know that in another life it would be her. Or him, don't you find? A small quickening. The room responds slightly to being entered. Like a raised blind. Nothing intended, and a long way from doing anything, but you catch the glint of being someone else's possibility, and it's a sort of politeness to show you haven't missed it, so you push it a little, well within safety, but there's that sense of a promise almost being made in the touching and kissing without which no one can seem to say good morning in this poney business and one more push would do it.

-The Real Thing (London 1982), p.73

Today, I bought a copy of the play at the co-op, I thought I should send it to you- out of a sort of politeness. — Susan Rieger

Now, there is no business like show business, and there is no publicity like word of mouth. What is word of mouth, you may ask? Well, word of mouth is gold to Hollywood bigwigs, and it equates to box office bonanzas and hit TV shows. — Kristoffer Polaha

The message sent by this policy is that if women are to be accepted into the exclusive ranks of men, then they have to look like men: buttoned up, stuffy, and no-nonsense. As if to show a little cleavage, to highlight a curvaceous figure, or to in any way appear feminine would discount, discredit, and disqualify them.
I strongly disagree with this idea. I feel that women should wear clothes that suit their bodies rather than forcing themselves into unflattering men's suits and that it is feminist to to make a wide range of women's clothes acceptable business attire. — Tim Gunn

I love my job here. I appreciate all your support with my efforts, and it's been exciting to see the results. As you know, business is up twenty percent over last year at this time [hand her the memo sheet now]. I'd like you to consider changing my title to [fill in the blank] and taking my salary up to [fill in blank]. I'd really like to show you what I could do in this new role. — Kate White

I like to look at things that have been developed and re-developed over the course of time so I know the bugs are worked out of it. And in the business itself, I like to look at sales, by far. I want to see that there is a vetted track record of sales to show the price point has worked. — Daymond John

People who like to fume about the manner in which Disney changed beloved classics are often ignorant of history, not to mention the realities of show business. — Kage Baker

Liverpool really ever since I can remember, but anyway in the '50s and '60s was always a place where people were potentially in show business, knew someone who was, would like to be, had been but were now doing something else and there was a general recreational feeling in the air at all times. — Derek Taylor

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico. — Matthew Stewart

Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy's, the Actors' Chapel on New York's 49th Street, peal the tune of 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway. — Dan Stevens

Show business is like a bumpy bus ride. Sometimes you find yourself temporarily juggled out of your seat and holding onto a strap. But the main idea is to hang in there and not be shoved out the door. — Cliff Robertson

Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show. — Gary Vaynerchuk

'Entourage' is a great show, but it's fantasy. I spent my twenties in L.A. in this business, and my life didn't look anything like that. 'Big Bang' reflects a side of men that is rarely shown. We see their flaws - all of them. — Johnny Galecki

People who grew up in major cities may wonder why the hell I would act like it's a big deal to be unaccompanied in New York City at that age. It's populated with both adults and children, it's a functioning metropolis, Kevin McCallister was only ten in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and that kid saved Christmas. Conversely, people from suburban areas act like my parents sent me wandering around the site of the Baby Jessica well, blindfolded and holding a flaming baton. So pick a side and prepare to judge me wither way! — Anna Kendrick

They say that politics is show business for ugly people, but as I always crack, what would I know about that? I like a challenge — George Galloway

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. — Caitlin Doughty

I don't like show business. I don't like the business. I love acting. I love this. I love talking to people. — Jeffrey Tambor

I'd rather be a flop at show business than to be a success at something I didn't like. — George Burns

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business. — John Krasinski

Man is now a new animal, a new and different animal; he can jump a hundred miles, see through brick walls, bombard atoms, analyse the stars, set about his business with the strength of a million horses. And so forth and so on. Yes. Yes. But all the same he goes on behaving like the weak little needy ape he used to be. He grabs, snarls, quarrels, fears, stampedes, and plays in his immense powder magazine until he seems likely to blow up the whole damned show. — H.G.Wells

Nowadays it seems more and more like the 'business' in 'show business' is underlined, and there are campaigns, and it's all part of getting people in to see the movies. — Jeff Bridges

I'm not in show business because I don't have to go to the meetings, I'm just not a part of it, I don't belong to it. When you "belong" to something. You want to think about that word, "belong." People should think about that: it means they own you. If you belong to something it owns you, and I just don't care for that. I like spinning out here like one of those subatomic particles that they can't quite pin down. — George Carlin

I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music. — Barbara Mandrell

I guess show business is a lot like baseball: "Wait until next year!" You just never know. Some of the shittiest shows I've ever seen run forever, and some of the best things never get a chance. — Kurt Fuller

Show business is like riding a bicycle - when you fall off, the best thing to do is get up, brush yourself off and get back on again. — Gilda Radner