Art Buchwald Quotes - Page 3

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

I worship the quicksand he [Richard Nixon] walks in.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.