Dave Barry Quotes

I actually like south Florida. I never lived in a more interesting place than this. I've never met a wider range of people. I guess when I came here I thought there were Cubans and then there were people from New York and that was Miami. Now I know that it's Cubans, people from New York, and some people from New Jersey.

I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work.... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.

Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs- bank vice presidents, insurance salesmen, auditors, secretaries of defense- and you'll realie they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny- and they all succeed.

Derangement is the only possible explanation for owning a cat, an animal whose preferred mode of communication is to sink its claws three-quarters of an inch into your flesh.

9 saw the first direct-dialed long-distance telephone call, between New York and San Francisco. Of course, back in that primitive era the parties had to speak to each other manually; today one or both ends of the conversation would be carried on by a machine.

The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar.

If women were in charge of all the world's nations, there would be sincerely believe this - no military conflicts, and when there WAS a military conflict, everybody involved would feel just awful and there would soon be a high-level exchange of notes written on greeting cards with flowers on the front, followed by a Peace Luncheon

Stuffwise we are not a lean operation. We're the kind of people who, if we were deciding what absolute minimum essential items we'd need to carry in our backpacks for the final, treacherous ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, would take along aquarium filters, just in case.

If God had wanted us to spend all our time fretting about the problems of home ownership, He would never have created beer. This is not to say that I am recommending that you totally ignore your responsibilities as a homeowner and just sit around all day with a can of beer in your hand. No indeed, I have long been a believer in purchasing bottled beer, and pouring it into a chilled glass.

I've never actually given birth to a child, but I suspect that going to a Justin Bieber concert with a child is close.

Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is lumpy and hairy and should not be seen by the light of day. Men are turned on at the sight of a naked woman's body. Most naked men elicit laughter from women.

When Prince Charles speaks, everybody pretends to be fascinated, even though he has never said anything interesting except in that intercepted telephone conversation wherein he expressed the desire to be a feminine hygeine product.

The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.

You might have mentioned this to me Molly,” said Leonard. “The fact that there are hostile natives on the island.” “I forgot,” said Molly. “You forgot?” said Leonard. “There’s been a lot happening,” said Molly.

The way this country deals with drugs is just not funny. What a waste of everyone's time and effort. What a waste of a lot of people's lives.

One of the major hobbies in South Florida is keeping animals that no sane person would want to keep. One of those is snakes. They usually get them when they're small, and when they get too big, they let them go. But there are also people with monkeys, lions, tigers. And they all get away, eventually.

It was not easy victory in the America Cup. Our boys spent years experimenting with different designs for their boat before they came up with the innovative idea of having a submerged nuclear submarine tow it.

I'm not saying that women don't think about sex also. I'm saying that women are capable, for at least brief periods of time, of not thinking about sex, and that most guys are not.

At the time, we were mad at Moammar Gadhafi, which resulted in us bombing all over Libya and killing a bunch of people, but not him. Then Ronald Reagan gets up and says we're not trying to kill him, we're just dropping bombs. You can kill all the Libyans you want, but legally you can't try to kill the leader.

Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money.

The weightlifting competition I saw was the women's 63 kg class. I'm not sure whether this means the actual women weighed 63 kg or the weights they lifted weighed 63 kg. Or possibly the temperature in the weightlifting hall was 63 kg. There's no way to know for sure without finding out what a "kg" is, and my belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won.

I do not mean to be the slightest bit critical of TV newspeople, who do a superb job, considering that they operate under severe time constraints and have the intellectual depth of hamsters. But TV news can only present the "bare bones" of a story; it takes a newspaper, with its capability to present vast amounts of information, to render the story truly boring.

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.

This is true; virtually all edible substances, and many automotive products, are now marketed as being low-fat or fat-free. Americans are obsessed with fat content.

I think Superman should go on the Larry King show and announce that he would come back to life if people in all 50 states wanted him to.

I am absolutely sick unto death of hearing people say - they all say this; it must be Item One on the curriculum in Trend College - "I just hate to talk to a machine!" They say this as though it is a major philosophical position, as opposed to a description of a minor neurosis. My feeling is, if you have a problem like this, you shouldn't go around trumpeting it; you should stay home and practice talking to a machine you can feel comfortable with, such as your Water Pik, until you are ready to assume your place in modern society.

Many, many of you have written to me asking the following question: 'Dave, have their been any new advancements in the field of artificial falcon insemination, and could these developments be used to improve the American electoral process?'

Here's a man who was twice elected to the most powerful position on Earth despite needing a TelePrompTer to correctly identify what year it was.

Some [soccer] players suffer four or five fatal injuries per game. That's how tough they are.

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.

Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

Lobsters displays all three of the classic biological characteristics of an insect, namely: 1. It has way more legs than necessary. 2. There is no way you would ever pet it. 3. It does not respond to simple commands such as "Here, boy!"

Proper turkey preparation is critical. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more Americans die every year from eating improperly cooked turkey than were killed in the entire Peloponnesian War. This is because turkey can contain salmonella, which are tiny bacteria that, if they get in your bloodstream, develop into full-grown salmon, which could come leaping out of your mouth during an important business presentation.

Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

It takes a minimum of six people, working in close harmony, to successfully flush a nautical toilet. That's why those old ships carried such large crews.

This book is dedicated to Wilbur and Orville Wright, without whom air sickness would still be just a dream.

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.

If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.

We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.

Database: the information you lose when your memory crashes.

Murphy's golden rule: Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.

In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

I don't have any insight or understanding on anything about the government. All I think is that it's stupid - which is the one perspective that's almost completely lacking in Washington.

As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.

For people who like peace and quiet: a phoneless cord.

Reflectors need to be placed on trees every 50 feet so people can hike at night with flashlights.

Dogs would make totally incompetent criminals. If you could somehow get a group of dogs to understand the concept of the Kennedy assassination, they would all immediately confess to it. Whereas you'll never see a cat display any kind of guilty behavior, despite the fact that several cats were seen in Dallas on the grassy knoll area, not that I wish to start rumors.