Dave Barry Quotes

Humor is an escape, because you cannot think about your problems when you are trying to be funny; so, in essence, "being a humorist" gives you a valid excuse to hide from your pain.

There is nothing as relaxing as being out on the open sea, listening to the waves and the wind and the sails and voices downstairs yelling "HOW DO YOU FLUSH THESE TOILETS?"

Another important rule of affair-having: Never be discreet at the office.

Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school.

[American tax laws] are constantly changing as our elected representatives seek new ways to ensure that whatever tax advice we receive is incorrect.

I was a young person once, shortly after the polar ice caps retreated, and I distinctly recall believing that virtually all adults were clueless goobers.

Never lick a steak knife.

There's only one way kids will wear helmets, and that's if their parents are nagging them to. They will never wear helmets because some state passes a law requiring it.

In those days, most people read newspapers, whereas today, most people do not. What caused this change? One big factor, of course, is that people are a lot stupider than they used to be, although we here in the newspaper industry would never say so in print.

Toaster: A gift that every member of the family appreciates. Automatically burns toast.

I would rather undergo a vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera.

I never start a section of the story without knowing how it will end. I also consciously try to shape the story as though it were a movie.

Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home.

But my point is that competitive eating is a real sport, and I considered taking it up. But when I thought about what this would mean sitting around for hours, stuffing my face with unhealthy food I realized it was basically the same thing as journalism.

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.

You can say any fool thing to a dog and the dog will just give you this look that says, 'My GOSH, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that!

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.

We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon.

All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow.

Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.

Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor's garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one.

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

I've come to realize that you're going to get criticized no matter what. Somebody will always hate what you write, especially if you write humor for a fairly broad audience. Somebody will always find it not funny and declare you're not funny anymore. And sometimes people are just crazy.

The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy.

Now, once again, we find ourselves facing rising gas prices, and the question is: This time, are we going to learn from the past? Are we finally going to get serious about energy conservation? Of course not! We have the brains of mealworms! So we need to get more oil somehow. As far as I can figure, there's only one practical way to do this. That's right: We need to clone more dinosaurs. We have the technology, as was shown in two blockbuster scientific movies, Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park Returns with Exactly the Same Plot. Once we have the dinosaurs, all we need is an asteroid.

If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any "spare" change.

The Internet is a giant international network of intelligent, informed computer enthusiasts, by which I mean, "people without lives." We don't care. We have each other.... While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most settings, uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our "CONFIG.SYS."

Of all the wonderful things government says, that's always been just about my favorite. As opposed to if you get to keep the money. Because what you'll do is go out and bury it in your yard, anything to prevent that money from creating jobs. They never stop saying it.We will say, "This is expected to create x number of jobs." On the other hand, we never say that the money we removed from another part of the economy will kill some jobs.

The newspaper industry when I came along in the mid-70s was rich and powerful and growing and hungry for material and open to new people. None of that is true in the newspaper industry today. Print in general is pretty rugged. The good thing is that you can gain a foothold on the Internet because everybody has access to it, even things like Twitter - I mean, you can get a reputation for being funny pretty quickly on Twitter, on a blog, that kind of thing.

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Here's my proposal, which is based on the TV show Survivor: We put the entire Congress on an island. All the food on this island is locked inside a vault, which can be opened only by an ordinary American taxpayer named Bob. Every day, the congresspersons are given a section of the Tax Code, which they must rewrite so that Bob can understand it. If he can, he lets them eat that day; if he can't, he doesn't.

I've always found relationships, men and women, the fact that they are so radically different, and it manifests itself in so many different ways, and yet somehow we still try to live together and be friends. I find that endlessly valuable as a source of material for humor. Generally dogs are always funny in my opinion. And the federal government - just a relentlessly productive source of humor.

Meetings are places where dead ideas rise from their graves and eat the brains of the living.

If Congress were to pass a 'flat' tax, you'd simply pay a fixed percentage of your income, and you wouldn't have to fill out any complicated forms, and there would be no loopholes for politically connected groups, and normal people would actually understand the tax laws, and giant talking broccoli stalks would come around and mow your lawn for free, because Congress is NOT going to pass a flat tax, you pathetic fool.

Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot be hid

My theory is that there is a finite amount of intelligence in a family, and you're supposed to gradually transfer it to your children over a period of many years. This is why your parents started to get so stupid just at the time in your life when you were getting really smart.

There are two kinds of people in this world, and I am one of them.

When the boomers started to have kids reach adolescence, there was suddenly this feeling that they needed to protect their kids from all the same things they did when they were kids. Which I guess is a natural tendency, but it makes for a less fun society.

'Escargot' is French for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm'.

A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.

I'm not sure you can count as history, was Keith Richards's "Life," which he so modestly titled it. I did find it a fascinating book. Keith's a pretty honest fellow.

If the security personnel do their job properly, they just might cause you to miss your plane, thereby possibly saving your life.

I regularly read Internet user groups filled with messages from people trying to solve software incompatibility problems that, in terms of complexity, make the U.S. Tax Code look like Dr. Seuss.

Sometimes you panic and find yourself emitting remarks so profoundly inane that you would be embarrassed to say them to your dog. Your dog would look at you and think to itself, 'I may lick myself in public, but I'd never say anything as stupid as that.'

So when I open the door on Halloween, I am confronted by three or four imaginary heroes, such as G.I. Joe, Conan the Barbarian and Oliver North, who would look very terrifying except that they are three feet tall and facing in random directions. They stand there silently for several seconds before an adult voice hisses from the darkness behind them: "Say 'Trick or treat!

For the benefit of those of you who have real jobs and are not involved in the news business, I should first explain that . . .

The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture finished and put inside boxes.

Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons.