I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

Steven Wright is known for deadpan, one-line jokes that hinge on literal logic and understated delivery. “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.” belongs to his early stand-up repertoire from the 1980s, when he emerged as a distinctive voice in American comedy through late-night TV appearances and comedy albums. The line plays like a mock “progress report” on an impossible life goal, typical of Wright’s persona: calm, matter-of-fact, and philosophically absurd. It circulated widely via his stand-up sets and recordings, becoming one of his best-known quips.

The joke turns on a collision between grand intention and mundane measurement. “Live forever” is an absolute, untestable aim—until Wright treats it like a project with interim milestones. “So far, so good” is the language of ordinary self-assessment, but here it’s applied to immortality, creating comic incongruity. The line also lightly satirizes human optimism and self-help rhetoric: we often declare sweeping ambitions and then congratulate ourselves for short-term survival or partial progress. Beneath the humor is a wry reminder that, for now, everyone who is alive can claim the same evidence of “success.”