Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Art Buchwald

Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.

Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?

I found out I'd spent my whole life believing things that weren't necessarily accurate. My sisters' memories of certain events are entirely different from mine.

There was tremendous pressure to take dialysis, and there were lots of tears when I broke the news to the family that I was not going to do it.

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.

I've known Don since he came to Washington. When he first came to work for George W. Bush, he was a different Don Rumsfeld. He was jolly, full of life, and ready to go to war, but only if we could win.

A humorist has to be taken seriously before he's considered a real writer.

I was put on earth to make people laugh.

The powder is mixed with water and tastes exactly like powder mixed with water.

It is one thing to choose to go into a hospice; it's another thing to get on the air and tell everybody about it.

I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.

Men and women cannot live by bread alone. They must also tinkle. Show me someone who has no trouble tinkling, and I will show you a happy and rich person.

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.

Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.

So far things are going my way. I am known in the hospice as The Man Who Wouldn't Die. I don't know if this is true or not, but I think some people, not many, are starting to wonder why I'm still around.

Becoming eighty is a matter of life or death. I chose life. It is a much better position to be in, and it's easier on your back.

Television has a real problem. They have no page two.

The Marine Corps was the first father figure I had ever known.

Being in the hospice didn't work out exactly the way I had expected. By all rights, I should have finished my time here in mid-March 2006 - at least, that's when Medicare stopped paying.

Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.

The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.

This is a wonderful way to celebrate an 80th birthday... I wanted to be 65 again, but they wouldn't let me - Homeland Security.

A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.

I worship the quicksand he walks in.

Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before.

I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get there, but I'm going first class.

I can now say without hesitation the Marine Corps was the best foster home I ever had.

... I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

People who live in glass houses have to wash their windows all the time.

People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man does not drive, there is something wrong with him.

Television has a real problem. They have no page two. Consequently every big story gets the same play and comes across to the viewer as a really big, scary one.

This is what makes me happy: Remembering where I put my house keys.

The things that matter most are not things.

I don't know what's coming next and neither does anyone else. It's something that we do have to face but the thing is that a lot of people don't want to face it. And there's denial. If somebody says it, like me, everybody feels a little better that they can discuss it.

Put yourself in Hamlet's shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? Go back for a masters?

There isn't a child who hasn't gone out into the brave new world who eventually doesn't return to the old homestead carrying a bundle of dirty clothes.

I contemplated suicide. My main concern was that I would not make the New York Times obituary page.

Every once in a while your world stands still... There are certain friendships that are so important they leave a mark on you long after the person is gone.

I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?

If President Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, had been Moses' secretary, there would only be eight commandments.

An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn't know any women.

When it came to writing about wine, I did what almost everybody does - faked it

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess.

I'm working when I'm fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage.

Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.

If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.

This is what makes me happy: ...Any music-free restaurant ... A grandson who offers to clean the snow off my driveway and also fix my computer ... An evening in bed with a good book. ... A good night's sleep ... As you can see, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.

I learned quickly that when I made others laugh, they liked me.

As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.

People ask what I am really trying to do with humor. The answer is, "I'm getting even

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.

The best things in life aren't things.

Writers are funny about reviews: when they get a good one they ignore it-- but when they get a bad review they never forget it. Every writer I know is the same way: you get a hundred good reviews, and one bad, andyou remember only the bad. For years, you go on and fantasize about the reviewer who didn't like your book; you imagine him as a jerk, a wife-beater, a real ogre. And, in the meantime, the reviewer has forgotten all about the whole thing. But, twenty years later, the writer still remembers that one bad review.

I earned my stripes as a Marine, and the Corps gets full credit for straightening me out. At 17, I was young, I was unhappy and most of all, I was undisciplined. The Marine Corps was the right service in the right place at the right time.

I don't know whether this is the best of times or the worst of times, but I assure you it's the only time you've got. You can either sit on your expletive deleted or pick a daisy.

Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, "I am not a crook." Jimmy Carter says, "I have lusted after women in my heart." President Reagan says, "I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope."

Don't commit suicide, because you might change your mind two weeks later.