One Line Was All They Needed
Steven Wright could make an audience laugh without appearing especially pleased that anyone had shown up. Mitch Hedberg looked like he might leave at any moment—but kept finding reasons to stay for one more joke.
Both became comedy legends one strange sentence at a time. So forget the career statistics for now. Let the one-liners do the talking.
John Atashian and Jason Squires, Getty Images
Sleep
Steven Wright: “I woke up one morning, my girlfriend asked me if I slept good. I said, ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’”
Mitch Hedberg: “I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.”
Water
Steven Wright: “I bought some powdered water, but I don’t know what to add.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I drank some boiling water because I wanted to whistle.”
Animals
Steven Wright: “I took my dog for a walk, all the way from New York to Florida. I said to him, ‘There, now you’re done.’”
Mitch Hedberg: “Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus, or just a really cool opotamus?”
Carson Wanted Him Back Immediately
Wright made his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in August 1982. Carson enjoyed the unknown comedian so much that he gave him the extremely rare invitation to return within a week. Wright had spent years reaching national television—and suddenly needed another television-ready set almost immediately.
Screenshot from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, NBC (1962–1992)
Getting Around
Steven Wright: “Everywhere is walking distance if you’ve got the time.”
Mitch Hedberg: “An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an ‘Escalator Temporarily Out of Order’ sign. Just ‘Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.’”
Cameras
Steven Wright: “I bought a new camera. It’s very advanced. You don’t even need it.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I think Bigfoot is blurry. That’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault.”
The Stage Fright Was Real
Hedberg’s lowered head and sunglasses became part of his image, but his discomfort onstage was not an act. He said stage fright had once “crippled me severely.” It took about two years before audiences regularly laughed and roughly five years before he could deliver a reliable run of jokes.
Shopping
Steven Wright: “I also bought some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn’t have one, so I got a cake.”
Restaurants
Steven Wright: “I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast any time.’ So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I don’t need a receipt for a doughnut. I’ll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction! We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this! I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d have to prove that I bought a doughnut.”
Hedberg Made His Own Movie
Hedberg did more than stand-up. He wrote, directed, and starred in Los Enchiladas!, an independent comedy set inside a chain Mexican restaurant. It premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival but never received a proper commercial release, turning it into one of the great missing pieces of Hedberg’s career.
Screenshot from Los Enchiladas!, Cowboy Booking International (1999), Modified
Clothing
Steven Wright: “They ask me what size I need, and I say, ‘Extra medium.’”
Mitch Hedberg: “Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day.”
Doctors
Steven Wright: “I’m addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn’t matter.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I went to the doctor. All he did was suck blood from my neck. Don’t go see Doctor Acula.”
Plants
Steven Wright: “I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me, and I didn’t hear a thing.”
Mitch Hedberg: “My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.”
Dogs
Steven Wright: “I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he’s gone.”
Mitch Hedberg: “Dogs are forever in the push-up position.”
Books
Steven Wright: “When I first read the dictionary, I thought it was a long poem about everything.”
Mitch Hedberg: “Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read.”
Jobs
Steven Wright: “I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I used to be a hot-tar roofer. Yeah, I remember that...day.”
Screenshot from Late Night with Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993–2009)
Fox Thought He Was the Next Seinfeld
In 1998, Time put Hedberg among comedy’s next generation and answered its own “Next Seinfeld?” question with a confident “Yes.” Fox apparently saw something similar and gave him a reported $500,000 development deal. The sitcom never materialized, which may be proof that not every great comedian needs a living-room set.
Instant Food
Steven Wright: “I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I make myself a bowl of instant oatmeal, and then I don’t do anything for an hour. Why do I need the instant oatmeal? I could get the regular oatmeal and feel productive.”
Relationships
Steven Wright: “A friend of mine has a trophy wife, but apparently it wasn’t first place.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.”
Screenshot from Late Show with David Letterman, CBS (1993–2015)
Hotels
Steven Wright: “I’m staying in an old hotel. They sent me a wake-up letter.”
Mitch Hedberg: “My hotel doesn’t have a 13th floor because of superstition. People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you’re really on.”
Museums
Steven Wright: “I went to a museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.”
Mitch Hedberg: “I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.”
Screenshot from Late Night with Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993–2009)
Wright Won an Oscar—and Nailed the Speech
Wright shared the 1989 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for The Appointments of Dennis Jennings. Naturally, he accepted one of Hollywood’s biggest prizes with a joke, saying they were glad they had “cut out the other sixty minutes.” Even Oscar-winning Steven Wright still sounded exactly like Steven Wright.
Screenshot from The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, Pyramid Films (1988)
The English Language
Steven Wright: “Sometimes you cannot hear me, it’s because sometimes I’m in parentheses.”
Mitch Hedberg: “Xylophone is spelled with an X. That’s wrong. Xylophone’s zzzz. X? I don’t see it. It should be a Z up front. Next time you have to spell xylophone, use a Z. When someone says, ‘Hey, that’s wrong,’ say, ‘No, it ain’t. If you think that’s wrong, you need to get your head Z-rayed.’ It’s like X wasn’t given enough to do, so they had to promise it more.”
Ron Galella, Ltd, Getty Images
The Past
Steven Wright: “Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”
Mitch Hedberg: “Every picture is of you when you were younger.”
Wright Waited 22 Years to Name the Sequel
Wright’s first comedy album, I Have a Pony, earned a Grammy nomination. More than two decades later, he released I Still Have a Pony—and that album was nominated too. Apparently, the title alone required 22 years of setup, which still feels surprisingly rushed for Steven Wright.
So, Who Was the King?
Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg: Both of these comedic geniuses could take an ordinary thought, twist it once, and leave behind a joke people remembered for decades.
: Screenshot from Late Night with Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993–2009)
So, who is your king of the one-liners?
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