Dave Barry Quotes

Headbangers' are people who like heavy-metal music, which is performed by skinny men with huge hair who stomp around the stage, striking their instruments and shrieking angrily, apparently because somebody has stolen all their shirts.

No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

Smee you, idjit!

But when it came to eloquence, George [H. W.] Bush was Winston Churchill compared with his vice president, the legendary J. Danforth Quayle. You never knew what Dan was going to say next, and the wonderful thing was, Dan clearly didn't know either. He'd be asked a question, and he'd start talking, and you could see in his eyes that he was thinking, Ohmigod I'm talking and I HAVE NO EARTHLY IDEA WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING RIGHT NOW!

New houses, which are crap, because they don’t build them the way they used to anymore. Old houses, which used to be good, because they were built back when they built them the way they used to, but which today, as a result of being old, are crap. So whichever kind of house you own, it’s going to be some variety of crap, which means sooner or later everything in it will break. Dealing with broken things is the essence of home ownership, and it’s exhausting.

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

If Man A asks Man B for directions, Man B, realizing that Man A is a weak, direction-asking type of male who probably also reads owner's manuals, could decide to attack Man A's village and plunder his women. Man A is not about to run that type of risk.

Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down.

Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

If Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then, Peter would declare himself eleven. Also, he could spit the farthest. That made him the undisputed leader.

There were letters on the bottom, letters he'd seen before, on the ship that had carried him from London, the ship that had broken up on the reef that guarded the island. The letters said: NEVER LAND.

Peter looked at it. And then he looked around him — at the lagoon; at the rock where the mermaids (Mermaids!) lounged; at the palm-fringed beach; at the tinkling fairy flitting over his head; at his new friends the Mollusks; at the jungle-covered, pirate-infested mountains looming over it all.

Then he looked at the board again, and he laughed out loud.

'That's exactly where I am,' he said.

It was the standard airport-security operation, which meant it appeared to have been designed to hassle law-abiding passengers just enough to reassure them, while at the same time providing virtually no protection against criminals with an IQ higher than celery. (Chapter 11)

"WILLIAMS: The phrase, of course, is a variation of a line from the song "MacArthur Park." Any idea why the terrorists picked that particular song, Elizabeth?
BURGER: Brian, one theory is that it was chosen specifically to demoralize the United States, because it gets stuck in your head and everybody hates it."

"The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just say it's pictures of people naked. For example, you have these primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot, and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of Northern Mali that you may be interested in."

So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason naked, or whatever. But if National Geographic were to publish an article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography. But others would not. And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev. Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked."

If I had to pick one year to represent the Fifties, I'd pick 1958. For one thing, it was the year that the folks at Wham-O, always looking for new ways to raise the level of American culture, gave us the Hula Hoop. This was a bright-colored plastic hoop that you spun around your hips using a hula-type motion. I realize that this sounds stupid, but you must trust me when I tell you, as one who participated extensively in this fad, that it really was stupid. In terms of intellectual content, the Hula Hoop made the Frisbee look like international championship chess.