Dave Barry's Greatest Hits Quotes

“2. The instant the doors open, you want to push forward as hard as possible, in an effort to get onto the train without letting anybody off. This is very important. If anybody does get off, it is legal to tackle him and drag him back on.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“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.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“If armed terrorists had tried to hijack any of the flights I’ve been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meal. Funny, isn’t it? The airlines go to all that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a dinner toll you could kill a musk ox with.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“WARNING: ANY MONEY YOU SAVE BY DOING HOMEOWNER PROJECTS YOURSELF WILL BE OFFSET BY THE COST OF HIRING COMPETENT PROFESSIONALS TO COME AND REMOVE THEM SO YOU CAN SELL YOUR HOUSE, NOT TO MENTION THE EMOTIONAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATED WITH LISTENING TO THESE PROFESSIONALS, AS THEY RIP OUT LARGE CHUNKS OF A PROJECT, LAUGH, AND YELL REMARKS SUCH AS: “HEY! GET A LOAD OF THIS.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Of course most of us find it difficult to talk about insects without bringing up the subject of sex.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“HAVE YOU EVER REALLY EMBARRASSED YOURSELF? Don’t answer that, stupid. It’s a rhetorical question. Of course you’ve embarrassed yourself. Everybody has. I bet the pope has. If you were to say to the pope: “Your Holy Worshipfulness, I bet you’ve pulled some blockheaded boners in your day, huh?” he’d smile that warm, knowing, fatherly smile he has, and then he’d wave. He can’t hear a word you’re saying, up on that balcony.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Been in a lot of time zones. Been on a lot of planes. Had a lot of complimentary honey-roasted peanuts whapped onto my tray table by hostile flight attendants. “Would you care for some peanuts, sir?” WHAP. Like that. The flight attendants hate us passengers, because we’re surly to them because our flight is delayed. Our flight is always delayed. The Russians will never be able to get their missiles through the dense protective layer of delayed flights circling over the United States in complex, puke-inducing holding patterns.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“I chose the members very carefully, based on their ability to correctly answer the following question: “Do you want to go to Orlando at your own expense and perform before Tupperware distributors?” (The correct answer was: “Yes.”)”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“You would stay at home, the anxious hours ticking by, and you would wait for your Phone Man. It was as close as most people came to experiencing what heroin addicts go through, the difference being that heroin addicts have the option of going to another supplier. Phone customers didn’t. They feared the power of the Telephone Company.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“When you called for your installation appointment, the Telephone Company would say: “We will have an installer in your area between the hours of 9 A.M. October 3 and the following spring. Will someone be at home?” And you would say yes, if you wanted a phone.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“mommies”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“born and brewed in the U.S.A.,” and the men who drink it are American men, the kind of men who aren’t afraid to perspire freely and shake a man’s hand. That’s mainly what happens in Miller commercials: Burly American men go around, drenched in perspiration, shaking each other’s hands in a violent and patriotic fashion.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“At 3:14 A.M. I am awakened by a loud crashing sound, caused by workers from the city’s crack Department of Making Loud Crashing Sounds during the Night, who are just outside my window, breaking in a new taxicab by dropping it repeatedly from a 75-foot crane. Lying in bed listening to them, I can hardly wait for …”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Right down the street is the world-famous Times Square. Although this area is best known as the site where many thousands of people gather each New Year’s Eve for a joyous and festive night of public urination,”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“should explain that a “sommelier” is a wine steward, the dignified person who comes up to you at expensive restaurants, hands you the wine list, and says “Excellent choice, sir,” when you point to French writing that, translated, says “Sales Tax Included.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Sometimes my wife expresses concern about “overloading the circuit,” a term I suspect she read in one of her magazines. In the past decade or so, the women’s magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that men know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is look at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“It is a tragic sight indeed to see Welsh parents attempting to sing traditional songs such as “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to their children and lapsing into heart-rending silence when they get to the part about “E-I-E-I-O.” If any of you in our reading audience have extra vowels that you no longer need, because for example your children have grown up, I urge you to send them (your children) to: Vowels for Wales, c/o Lord Chesterfield, Parliament Luckystrike, the Duke of Earl, Pondwater-on-Gabardine, England.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“restaurants would have a “salad bar” offering lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, pretend-bacon bits, Cheez Whiz and a Special House Dressing made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, tended by an employee chosen on the basis of listlessness, whose job would be to make sure that all of these ingredients had been slopped over into each other’s compartments.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, pretend-bacon bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle, and a little slip of paper stating: “Inspected by Number 12.” The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn’t get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover’s Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover’s Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as “Nuggets.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Oscar C. Klaxton, an employee of the U.S. Department for Making Everybody Nervous, wins a $10,000 prize for dreaming up the concept of a deadly “hole” in an invisible “ozone layer.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Don Johnson announces he is leaving Miami, dealing a severe blow to the area’s hopes to repeat as winner of the Biggest Cockroach Contest.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The Senate Transportation committee recommends the federal speed limit be raised on highways going through boring or ugly areas, so drivers can get through them quicker. “In Indiana, for instance,” the committee says, “it should be 135 miles per hour.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Hurricane Floyd, packing a wind estimated at 14 miles per hour, lashes South Florida, wreaking more than $67.50 worth of havoc. Governor “Bob” Martinez, after touring the devastated area via golf cart, pledges that he will request federal disaster relief, then campaign against it.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The market-savvy McDonald’s Corporation, capitalizing on the popularity of the movie Fatal Attraction, introduces a new menu item, Boiled McRabbits.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The FAA, responding to consumer complaints, issues tough new rules under which airlines are required to notify passengers “within a reasonable period of time” if their plane has crashed.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The U.S. space probe Meanderer J I, after a journey of six years and many millions of miles, passes within 400 miles of the surface of Neptune, sending back dramatic color photographs of a Delta Air Lines jet.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“South Florida’s dreams of a first-class sports facility come true at last with the opening of Joe Robbie Stadium, featuring comfortable seating, excellent visibility, plenty of bathrooms, and nearly five parking spaces.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“The discovery of “superconductors”—materials that offer no resistance to electricity even at relatively high temperatures—creates a worldwide stir of excitement among the kind of dweebs who always had their Science Fair projects done early.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“In the Persian Gulf, Iranians attack the Islip garbage barge, but are driven off by courageous flies.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

“Andy Warhol goes to the Big Soup Can in the Sky.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits