Literary Birthday – 3 July – Dave Barry

Happy Birthday, Dave Barry, born 3 July 1947.

12 Funny Dave Barry Quotes

Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing.
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.
A sense of humour is a measurement of the extent to which we realise that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.
The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.
It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimetre bullet.
We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.
If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
Don’t you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don’t even have to be true!
Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and humour columnist. His books include Big Trouble and Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up.