I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood QUOTES

1 " At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

2 " In the kitchen, I turn on a TV set that has hundreds of channels devoted to every conceivable subject including celebrity bunion removal (This week: David Hasselhoff). I tune in to one of the literally dozens of news shows, all of which feature a format of 55 percent celebrities promoting things, 30 percent emails from viewers, and 15 percent YouTube videos showing bears jumping on trampolines. While I'm catching up on these developments, I turn on the programmable coffeemaker, which I hope that someday, perhaps by attending community college, I will learn to program. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

3 " You could be Charles Manson, or Hitler, or even a lawyer who advertises on television, and your dog will still think you're the greatest thing ever. This tells you something very important about dogs: They are not very bright. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

4 " Other useful commands to teach your dog are 'stay,' 'heel,' 'remove your snout from that person's groin,' 'stop humping the Barcalounger,' 'do not bark violently for two hours at inanimate objects such as a flowerpot,' ' do not eat poop,' and 'if you must eat poop, then at least refrain from licking my face afterward'. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

5 " Oh, I'm not saying that alcohol is perfect. It has caused its share of problems. Russia is only one example. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

6 " What happened was, they put me and my co-marshal, author Ridley Pearson, into an antique fire truck along with Daisy Duck and Clarabelle the Cow. I have nothing against either of these veteran Disney characters, but let's be honest, their careers are not currently sizzling, especially in the case of Clarabelle, who hasn't had a hit cartoon since roughly the Civil War. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

7 " Simply by eliminating description, the screenwriter can work his way through the entire plot in a single morning, leaving the afternoon free for screenwriter leisure activities such as drugs. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

8 " We also have a growing population of unwelcome out-of-town wildlife species that have come here and clearly intend to stay. Two invasive species in particular have caused serious concern: Burmese pythons, and New Yorkers. The New Yorkers have been coming here for years, which is weird because pretty much all they do once they get to Florida is bitch about how everything here sucks compared to the earthly paradise that is New York. They continue to root, loudly, for the Jets, the Knicks, the Mets, and the Yankees; they never stop declaring, loudly, that in New York the restaurants are better, the stores are nicer, the people are smarter, the public transportation is free of sharks, etc. The Burmese pythons are less obnoxious, but just as alarming in their own way. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

9 " And you definitely shouldn't attempt to drive yourself in Miami, because odds are you'd make some foolish tourist mistake such as stop for a red light, which means you'd be rear-ended by a vehicle going upwards of eighty miles per hour driven by a motorist with no insurance but a minimum of two firearms. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

10 " The truth is that only a small percentage of Miami's population consists of violent criminals, and the bulk of those are elected officials. The rest of us Miamians are regular people, just like the people in your town: We work hard, try to raise our kids right, and are always ready to help out our neighbors by laying down covering fire when they go outside to get their newspapers. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

11 " Our chief marketable skill, coming out of college, is the ability to write authoritatively about things we don’t necessarily understand. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

12 " In the old pre-technology days, it would have been almost impossible to replicate Facebook or Twitter. The closest you could get would be to mail dozens of postcards a day to everybody you know, each with a brief message about yourself like: "Finally got that haircut I've been putting off." Or: "Just had a caramel frappuccino. Yum!" The people receiving these postcards would have naturally assumed you were a moron with a narcissism disorder. But today, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, you are seen as a person engaging in 'social networking'. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

13 " You would think that, by sheer chance, there would come a time when you daughter's two dances would be close together, ideally near the beginning. But the dance studio makes sure this never happens, using the same computer scheduling program that the cable-TV company uses to make sure that the technician, for whom you have been waiting eleven hours, rings your doorbell only when you have just commenced pooping. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

14 " Very Important: During this sensitive postpartum time, you must be very careful not to say anything negative about your wife’s appearance. On the other hand, you must not say anything positive about your wife’s appearance, because she’ll know you’re lying. And whatever you do, do NOT give her the impression that you’re deliberately avoiding talking about her appearance. This might be a good time to enlist in the navy. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

15 " People who insist on being addressed as “doctor” because they have Ph.D.’s, as if these degrees represent an important achievement, rather than a reluctance to leave college; "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

16 " The point is, our health-care system is a terrible mess. It's expensive, wasteful, inefficient, unresponsive, and infested with lawyers. Which is why there has been a big push, in some quarters, to place it under the management of...
The federal government.
This is like saying that if your local police department has a corruption problem, the solution is to turn law enforcement over to the Sopranos. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

17 " By the 1800s, animal sacrifice had been largely discredited as a medical procedure; today it is rarely used outside of Miami. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

18 " Now I know what you're saying. You're saying: 'Dave, you have painted a distorted and inaccurate picture of the American health-care system. Not all patients wind up being as wretched as Mary! Many of them wind up being dead'. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

19 " Some years ago I proposed a new tourism-promotion slogan for Miami. I even had a bumper sticker made. It said: 'Come back to Miami! We Weren't Shooting at YOU'. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

20 " Most travel experts recommend that even if your final destination is Miami, it's better to fly to an airport in some other city - if necessary, Seattle - and take a cab from there. Or, as Savvy Air Traveler magazine suggests, 'simply jump out of the plane while it's still over the Atlantic'. "

― Dave Barry , I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood