Dave Barry Quotes

286 Sourced Quotes

Mother Nature clearly intended for us to get our food from the "patty" group, which includes hamburgers, fish sticks, and McNuggets- foods that have had all of their organs safely removed.

Dave Barry
Recently I began to feel this void in my life, even after meals, and I said to myself, "Dave, all you do with your spare time is sit around and drink beer. You need a hobby." So I got a hobby. I make beer.

Dave Barry
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.

Dave Barry
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.

Dave Barry
A hundred years ago, it could take you the better part of a year to get from New York to California; whereas today, because of equipment problems at O'Hare, you can't get there at all.

Dave Barry
There are also a number of humans living up there (Canada), and in many ways they have a lifestyle quite similar to ours, including such traditional American activities as driving Japanese cars.

Dave Barry
In my experience, if you go to a hospital for any reason whatsoever, including to read the gas meter, they give you a tetanus shot.

Dave Barry
The story of the eighties will be the story of the Reagan administration and the many men and women who served in it, some of whom are already out on parole.

Dave Barry
Fortunately the boat we rented had a motor in it You will definitely want this feature on your sailboat too, because if you put up the sails, the boat tips way over, and you could spill your beer.

Dave Barry
It is an inconvenience, being located in a city where taxes are ludicrously high, where you pay twice your annual income to rent an apartment that could easily be carried on a commercial airline flight.

Dave Barry
Washington is nicknamed "The Evergreen State" because it sounds better than "The Incessant Nagging Drizzle State."

Dave Barry
The taxpayers cannot be relied upon to support performing arts such as opera. As a taxpayer, I am forced to admit that I would rather undergo a vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera.

Dave Barry
I watched as an extremely nerdy exhibitor - I'm talking about a guy who makes Bill Gates look like Brad Pitt...

Dave Barry
Software is usually accompanied by documentation in the form of big fat scary manuals that nobody ever reads. In fact, for the past five years most of the manuals shipped with software products have actually been copies of Stephen King's The Stand with new covers pasted on.

Dave Barry
When preparing your return, you should be sure to avoid common mistakes. The two most common taxpayer mistakes, states the IRS booklet, are (1) "failure to include a current address," and (2) "failure to be a large industry that gives humongous contributions to key tax-law-writing congresspersons."

Dave Barry
One of the issues that we professional newspaper columnists are required by union regulations to voice grave concern about is the federal budget deficit, which we refer to as the "mounting" deficit, because every extra word helps when you have to produce a certain number of gravely concerned newsprint inches.

Dave Barry
If you have ever seen the movie Night of the Living Dead, you have a rough idea how modern corporations and organizations operate, with projects and proposals that everybody thought were killed constantly rising from their graves to stagger back into meetings and eat the brains of the living.

Dave Barry
The Hawaiian Islands were discovered by hardy Polynesian sailors, who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean in primitive canoes, braving violent storm-tossed seas for months at a time. My family and I arrived by modern commercial aviation, which was infinitely worse.

Dave Barry
Tokyo is huge. Something like 15 million people live there, and my estimate is that at any given moment, 14.7 million of them are lost.

Dave Barry
I feel that nasal spray is a wondrous medical achievement, because it is supposed to relieve nasal congestion, and by gadfrey, it relieves nasal congestion. What I'm saying is that it actually works, which is something you can say about very few other aspects of the medical establishment.

Dave Barry
The doctor looked at my cardiogram and made that "hmmmm" noise that doctors are taught in medical school so they won't come right out and say "UH-oh!"

Dave Barry
The Olympic movement simply cannot allow the Russians to become estranged, because Russia is a vital part of the world sports community, in the sense of having nuclear missiles.

Dave Barry
Terry Jackson, who is the Miami Herald's automotive writer and TV critic. That's correct: This man gets paid to drive new cars AND watch television. If he ever dies and goes to heaven, it's going to be a big let down.

Dave Barry
At the height of rush hour, people on the London underground actually say "excuse me." Imagine what would happen if you tried an insane stunt like that on the New York City subway. The other passengers would take it as a sign of weakness, and there'd be a fight over who got to keep your ears as a trophy.

Dave Barry
Experts agree that the best type of computer for your individual needs is one that comes on the market about two days after you actually purchase some other computer.

Dave Barry
You know how on the evening news they always tell you that the stock market is up in active trading, or off in moderate trading, or trading in mixed activity, or whatever. Well, who gives a

Dave Barry
One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals.

Dave Barry
I had arrived at the airport one hour early so that, in accordance with airline procedures, I could stand around.

Dave Barry
Real cars were made here in America: Fords, Chevys, Plymouths. These were large chunks of Detroit iron - cars that had the size, weight, and handling characteristics of aircraft carriers but worse fuel efficiency.

Dave Barry
What gets me is, I waited in line for an hour to do this. I could have experienced essentially the same level of enjoyment merely by sticking my finger down my throat.

Dave Barry