Dave Barry Quotes

There was nowhere to sit except the bunk, which was covered with rotting food, and a wooden stool, upon which sat a large fur-covered lump — an old cheese, perhaps, or a dead cat.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.

The metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing.

If someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, they are not a nice person.

What would happen is that every idiot in this town who owns a gun, which is basically every idiot in this town, would grab his gun, jump into his car, or somebody else's car, and lay rubber for I-95. Inside of ten minutes the city is gridlocked, and what happens next makes IwoJima look like a maypole dance. This whole town turns into the end of a Stephen King novel.

My name — or the English version of my name — is Fighting Prawn.”
“Fighting Prawn?” said Alf.
“Does my name amuse you, Englishman?” said Fighting Prawn.
“No,” said Alf, his grin evaporating.
“If I may ask,” said Fighting Prawn, “what is your name?”
“Alf,” said Alf.
“Alf,” repeated Fighting Prawn. He said something to the other Mollusk’s, which included “Alf.” They roared with laughter. Fighting Prawn turned back to Alf.
“In our language,” he said, “Alf means squid poop.

The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812.

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.

But it was not until World War II that the U.S. government began to unleash the true power of this technology, when our intelligence forces first employed computers to break enemy codes. Probably the most famous example concerns a top-secret cable sent from the Japanese military high command to Japan's ambassador in Washington on December 3, 1941. The cable, intercepted by U.S. agents, read: E-WAY ILL-WAY ATTACK-AY EARL-PAY ARBOR-HAY -TOKYO This cable was immediately fed into the U.S. War Department's top-secret code-breaking computer, code-named CODEBREAKER, which consisted of thousands of interconnected electronic switches, or "relays." Unlike human intelligence analysts, CODEBREAKER was able to work on the problem nonstop, 24 hours a day, never taking a coffee break (Although it did go to the bathroom four times), until finally, in March of 1944, it gave up. Before it quit, however, CODEBREAKER was able to correctly identify "Tokyo" as "a city in Asia"- information that was to prove vital in the war effort.

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.

They looked plainly scared, except for one, a wiry boy with bright orange hair — not the largest of the lot, but the one who seemed to be in charge. He had an air about him, Alf thought, the look of a boy who doesn’t miss much.

Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent?

No, subtlety and protocol are not the strong suit of Americans, which is one reason why the Japanese tend to view us as large, loud water buffalo, lumbering around without a clue, tromping and pooping all over their carefully arranged, exquisitely tended garden of a society. I certainly felt like a water buffalo when I got off the plane at Narita Airport, mumbling my one word of Japanese, taking my long vowels seriously, and weighing approximately four hundred pounds more than when I got on.

Think, for a moment, of the countless happy childhood hours you spent with this amazing device: Drawing perfect horizontals, drawing perfect verticals, drawing really spastic diagonals, trying to scrape away the silver powder from the window so you could look inside.