Top 817 Quotes & Sayings by Dave Barry - Page 14

Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his money.

I know that all over America there's probably politicians sending out pictures of themselves signing that mandatory helmet bill, but it's bullshit. I say that as a parent.

Within less than an hour, Chuck and I easily located what could well be the correct platform, where we pass the time by perspiring freely until the train storms in, colorfully decorated, as is the tradition in New York, with the spray-painted initials of all the people it has run over.

I am not a violent person. I am a product of the Flower Power '60s. I have actually worn bell-bottomed jeans.

If you answered, ''Spin the Bottle,'' then I frankly do not want to know any more about your childhood.

We decide to start with the best-known sight of all, the one that, more than any other, exemplifies what the Big Apple is all about: the Islip Garbage Barge.

I'm afraid that, in this chapter we must talk about sex in a very explicit manner, because we want to expand the Frontiers of Human Understanding and also we want to sell as many books as possible to adolescent boys.

Of course God enjoys a good prank as much as the next infallible deity.

I report as a machine; I write as a person. That clear dichotomy softens the transition.

The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar.

There shall be a National Anthem containing incomprehensible words and a high note that normal humans cannot hit without risk of hernia.

I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.

Another important rule of affair-having: Never be discreet at the office.

I was a young person once, shortly after the polar ice caps retreated, and I distinctly recall believing that virtually all adults were clueless goobers.

This nation is so friendly that the leading cause of injury is getting passionately embraced by strangers.

Miami, you can never run out of material. As long as you have Miami around you, you will never, never stop being amused.

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.

The voice belonged to Mr. Pzyrbovich, an algebra teacher who was always called Mr. P, for obvious reasons. He has a heavy accent, which a lot of kids said made him hard to understand, although to be fair some of these kids would have never understood algebra anyway.

Ask any real estate broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." Now ask him to name the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." This tells us that we should not necessarily be paying a whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.

Genes are little items that are found in every living thing except Sen. Alfonse D'Amato.

What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America, or Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.

If Mozart had power tools, there's no telling how great his music might have been.

Men have no cause to criticize women about the way they are about weddings. Because men are like that about sports, but it never ends. At least women, after the wedding, say it wasn't that big a deal and they're never going to look at the DVD again. Men never stop being crazy about sports.

Like many members of the uncultured, Cheez-It consuming public, I am not good at grasping modern art.

The hardest thing about being a guy is that women don't accept that you really are just a simple, pathetic, labrador retriever-like creature. That we live in a world were women actually expect you to think thoughtful thoughts, and have real emotions, which we don't have. Having to try to live up to the imaginary ideal that women have of what men are, instead of just being what you are, which is just a pathetic creature, but still.

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.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

I'm happy to start on one topic and end on another one entirely, as long as it's funny.

More and more products are coming out in fiercely protective packaging designed to prevent consumers from consuming them. These days you have to open almost every consumer item by gnawing on the packaging.

I have never had a point in my life to make. I'm just trying to entertain the reader.

When you say you don't think we should have public schools, they can't believe you mean that. You must mean that they should be smaller. But you can't really mean no public schools.

The Japanese, implementing a complex, long-term, and ultimately successful strategy to dominate the U S consumer-electronics market, attacked Pearl Harbor.

Although it was constructed in 1536, the New York subway system boasts an annual maintenance budget of nearly $8, currently stolen, and it does a remarkable job of getting New Yorkers from Point A to an indeterminate location somewhere in the tunnel leading to point B.

Famous designers think nothing of putting their names on your clothing, but would have the servants set the dogs on you if you ever tried to put your name on their clothing.

If you tell most people what libertarians think, they immediately assume that you cannot mean it all the way, that you're really just taking a position for argument's sake.

Any parent that relies on any law to help him parent is an idiot.