Dave Barry Quotes (1947-)

“"The Empire State" is of course dominated by New York City, the "Big Apple," filled with the bustle and excitement of millions of energetic, sophisticated, urbane people experiencing numerous only-in-New-York thrills such as making it all the way to work without getting peed on. As Frank Sinatra put it in his immortal and dynamic rendering of New York's Official Horrendously Overexposed Hit Show Tune, "New York, New York," "If I can make it there, I can afford to move to Stamford, Connecticut."”

“I base my opinions on several years of working in an office located in a house with a large transient little-boy population. Individually they're okay, but if two of them get together, their combined IQ is halved, and if a third boy comes along it's halved again, and so on, so that if you have, say, six of them, you're talking about the destructive force of a tank commanded by the brainpower of a Labrador retriever. They communicate with each other by slamming doors. They have the attention span of gnats. "STOP SLAMMING THE DOORS!" I'll yell at them. "Okay!" they'll reply (SLAM). They are so busy running around and arguing and breaking things and strewing random objects over every square inch of floor that they barely have time to pee, and they definitely don't have time to aim. They just race into the bathroom, let loose in any old random direction, and then race out again, because by God there are doors to be slammed.”

“1968- This is when it began to dawn on me that there was a serious competition going on in America to see who could be the biggest group of assholes: the right-wing assholes who thought that the Vietnam War was a good thing, as long as they personally did not have to go over to Vietnam and get shot at; or the left-wing assholes who thought that what we really needed was for more people to shoot each other here at home. It seemed as if both sets of assholes were winning in 1968. The King assassination did, in fact, result in terrible riots; and the Vietnam War, despite its growing unpopularity, became the longest in American history, with more U.S. troops over there than ever, and more men being drafted, and no end in sight.”

“One of the more traumatic aspects of reaching age 40 is that you no longer have the same body you had when you were 21. I know I don't. Sometimes when I take a shower I look down at my body and I want to scream: "Hey, THIS isn't my body! THIS body belongs to Willard Scott!" But this is perfectly natural. Screaming in the shower, I mean. Reaching age 40, however, is NOT natural. I base this statement on extensive scientific documentation in the form of a newspaper article I vaguely remember reading once, which stated that the life expectancy for human beings in the wild is about 35 years. Think about what that means. It means that if you were in the wild, even in the nonsmoking section, by now you'd be Worm Chow. So we can clearly see that going past age 40 is basically an affront to Nature, with Exhibit A being the Gabor sisters.”

“So we see that although age-denial is appealing, it can generally make a person look ridiculous. Oh, some people try to get away with it, the best example being the Rolling Stones. As I write these words, the remaining non-deceased Stones, some of whom were born during the Hundred Years War, are still out there on tour, still rockin' and rollin' and putting on an electrifying act that reaches its exciting climax during "Satisfaction," when drummer Charlie Watts hurls his dentures into the crowd. But is this really working, even for the Stones? To find out, I went to see them when they came to Miami. I'd seen them once before, when were all a lot younger, back in the sixties. That was one of those classic sixties concerts, the kind where even the police dogs are stoned, and where the show would be scheduled to start at 9:00P.M., but nothing would happen until maybe 11:30, when one of the promoters would get up on stage and announce that there would be a slight delay because the band was still at the airport in New Zealand.”

“Another area in which my son makes me feel old is fashion. Especially hair fashion. I've always considered myself extremely liberal when it came to hair, because I remember how much I hated the ahir hassles I went through back in the sixties when I had long hair. I'd be walking past a clot of geezers who were sitting in front of a volunteer fire department, hoping somebody's house would catch fire so they could watch the trucks pull out, and one of them would inevitably look at me and say in a tone of voice suggesting that this was the cleverest and most original remark ever thought up by anybody with the possible exception of Mark Twain, "Hey, is that a BOY or a GIRL??" This awesome display of wit never failed to absolutely slay the other geezers, who'd laugh themselves into various stages of coronary seizure ("har har har har hack hack hack hack hawk hawk HAWK SPIT"), and I, being a Flower Child Peace Person in the Summer of Love, would give them the finger. But I would also vow to myself that no matter how old I got, I would never, ever, hassle anybody about his haircut. Of course, back then there was no such thing as "punk."”

“See, when the Government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of Taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.”

“There are all kinds of causes to be alarmed about. For example, there's the Greenhouse Effect, which is one of the more recent in a series of alarming worldwide homicidal trends to be discovered by those busy beavers, the scientists. They've found that the Earth is slowly being turned into a vast greenhouse, so that by the year 2010- unless something is done- the entire human race will be crushed beneath a humongous tomato. Or something along those lines. I confess that I haven't been following the Greenhouse Effect all that closely.”

“Now I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Dave, you have painted a distorted and inaccurate picture of the American health-care system. Not all patients wind up being as wretched as Mary! Many of them wind up being dead." True, but let's not get nitpicky. The point is, our health-care system is a terrible mess. It's expensive, wasteful, inefficient, unresponsive, and infested with lawyers. Which is why there has been a big push, in some quarters, to place it under the management of... The federal government. This is like saying if your local police department has a corruption problem, the solution is to turn law enforcement over to the Sopranos. Nevertheless, there are people- intelligent, educated, well-meaning people- who seriously believe that we should let Washington redesign our health-care system. It goes without saying that these people live and work in Washington; that's the only place where you're going to find intelligent, educated, well-meaning people who are that stupid.”

“You must be careful about what you eat, unless you want your body making heart valves out of things like bean dip.”

“Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.”

“Nixon's first official act as president was to sneak out behind the White House and bury his secret peace plan to ensure that nobody would ever find out what it was, which would have been a breach of national security. With that important task accomplished, he swung into action, working feverishly to accomplish his most important objective, to realize the cherished dream that had driven him through all these years of disappointment, to reach the long-sought goal that, thanks to his election, was finally within his grasp, namely: getting reelected.”

“The most sensible way to ask a girl is to walk directly up to her on foot and say, "So, you want to go out? Or what?" I never did this. I knew, as Eric Knott knows, that there was always the possibility that the girl would say no, thereby leaving me with no viable option but to leave Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School forever and go into the woods and become a bark-eating hermit whose only companions would be the gentle and understanding woodland creatures. "Hey, ZITFACE!" the woodland creatures would shriek in cute little Chip 'n' Dale voices while raining acorns down upon my head. "You wanna DATE? HAHAHAHAHAHA."”

“And yet, as the weeks dragged into months and the economy continued to founder, it soon became clear that some economic "medicine" even more potent than THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF would be needed to get the nation "back on its feet." This paved the way for the historic election of 1932. The Republicans, showing the kind of sensitivity they are famous for, renominated President Hoover Dam, who pledged that, if reelected, he would flee to the Bahamas. The Democrats countered by nominated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or, as he was affectionately known, "J.F.K."- who ran under the slogan "Let's Elect Another President Named Roosevelt and Confuse the Hell out of Future Generations of Students." The voters responded overwhelmingly, and Roosevelt was elected in a mammoth landslide t hat unfortunately left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

“Bill Gates is a very rich man today ... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.”

“I'm not saying that you will, right off the bat, with no author experience, make the kind of money Stephen King makes. Achieving that level of success can take literally months.”

“Being a professional author is a great job. You get to work at home, be your own boss, and wear whatever you want. Fact: Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises wearing a penguin costume.”

“Of course there is more to Ireland than water sports. There is also the Irish people, a warm and friendly lot who are constantly saying things like "Begorrah!" Alcohol will do this to people.”

“Another popular humorist of the day was Will Rogers, who used to do an act where he'd twirl a lasso and absolutely slay his audiences with such wry observations as: "The only thing I know is what I read in the papers." Ha-ha! Get it? Neither do we. Must have been something he did with the lasso.”

“And although some members of Congress charged that Roosevelt was overstepping his legal authority, he was able to win them over by inviting them to the White House for a series of "Fireside Chats" ("Perhaps, Senator, you would better understand these policies if Ernst and Victor moved you even closer to the fire?" "NO! PLEASE!").”

“In 1980 the Democrats were pretty much stuck with Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, who ran under the slogan "Four More Years?" The Republicans, meanwhile, had a spirited primary campaign season, which came down to a duel between Reagan and George Herbert Walker Norris Wainright Armoire Vestibule Pomegranate Bush IV, who had achieved a distinguished record of public service despite having a voice that sounded like he had just inhaled an entire blimp-load of helium.”

“* In 1980 the Democrats were pretty much stuck with Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, who ran under the slogan "Four More Years?" The Republicans, meanwhile, had a spirited primary campaign season, which came down to a duel between Reagan and George Herbert Walker Norris Wainright Armoire Vestibule Pomegranate Bush IV, who had achieved a distinguished record of public service despite having a voice that sounded like he had just inhaled an entire blimp-load of helium.”

“The year 1908 saw the election of the first U.S. president to successfully weigh more than three hundred pounds, William Howard Taft, who ran on a platform of reinforced concrete and who, in a stirring inauguration speech, called for "a bacon cheeseburger and a side order of fries." Another important occurrence in the Taft administration was the famous Ballinger-Pinchot affair, which is truly one of the most fascinating and bizarre episodes in the nation's history, although it is quite frankly none of your business. (Especially the part about the dwarf goat.)”