Art Buchwald Quotations

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

When I got to the hospice I was under the impression it would be a two- or three-week stay. But here I still am, six weeks later, and I've gotten so well Medicare won't pay for me anymore.

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

As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.

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.

The things that matter most are not things.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

I like champagne because it always tastes as though my foot's asleep.

Ascot is so exclusive that it is the only racecourse in the world where the horses own the people.

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.

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

I worship the quicksand he walks in.

Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.

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

I don't mind 800 million Chinese drinking a bottle [of Coca-Cola] a day, but I don't want them to bring back the empties.

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

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

New York was the glamorous town that you only see now in old movies and on Broadway stages. The sky was lit up with dancing neon signs. It was safe to walk out in the streets.

I don't know whether it's normal or not, but sex has always been something that I take seriously. I would put it higher than tennis on my list of constructive things to do.

No one ever mentioned it, but thousands of men welcomed World War II as a way to escape their humdrum lives rather than a chance to fight for God and country.

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.

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

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?

Any company executive who overcharges the government more than $5 million will be fined $50 or have to go to traffic school three nights a week

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

Over the years I have met a lot of important people, but no one as important as Elvis Presley.

It was a dangerous profession I had chosen ... because no one likes a funny kid. In fact, adults are scared silly of them and tend to warn children who act out that they are going to wind up in prison or worse. It is only when you grow up that they pay you vast sums of money to make them laugh.

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

The best way to clean up a son's room is to close the door and pretend it's not part of the house.

I became a hero to everyone because I didn't take dialysis and was still alive.

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.

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.

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

I didn't go on dialysis because I was 81 years old and I'd done everything I wanted, or so I thought.

On the whole I woke up in the morning and was happy to be alive.

While my friends were discussing Pearl Harbor as the country's problem, I took it personally. It dawned on me that the Japanese attack could be my ticket out of high school.

The best things in life aren't things.

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

As my good friend Al Capp told me a few years ago, the best thing to do with a confirmed [hotel] reservation slip when you have no room is to spread it out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and go to sleep on it. You'll either embarrass the hotel into giving you a room or you'll be hauled off to the local jug, where at least you'll have a roof over your head.

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

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.

The reason I don't play golf is because I was a caddie when I was 13. Women never gave up a golf ball that was lost somewhere in the trees and thicket and down through the poison ivy. It was during one of these searches that I vowed to the Lord above that if I ever earned enough money I would never set foot on a course again.

I just don't want to die the same day Castro dies

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.

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.

I know it's very egocentric to believe that someone is put on Earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was.

The most important thing about writing a book is having book parties.

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

War for most men is not fighting or marching in parades. It is sitting around somewhere wondering what the hell you are supposed to be doing.

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

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

Any company executive who overcharges the government more than $5 million will be fined $50 or have to go to traffic school three nights a week