Art Buchwald
This is a wonderful way to celebrate an 80th birthday... I wanted to be 65 again, but they wouldn't let me - Homeland Security.Collection: Birthday
You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.Collection: Society
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.Collection: Best
Becoming eighty is a matter of life or death. I chose life. It is a much better position to be in, and it's easier on your back.
I was put on earth to make people laugh.
I worship the quicksand he walks in.
I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.
Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.
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.
Being in the hospice didn't work out exactly the way I had expected. By all rights, I should have finished my time here in mid-March 2006 - at least, that's when Medicare stopped paying.
I found out I'd spent my whole life believing things that weren't necessarily accurate. My sisters' memories of certain events are entirely different from mine.
Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
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.
The powder is mixed with water and tastes exactly like powder mixed with water.
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.
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.
Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?
If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.
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.
A humorist has to be taken seriously before he's considered a real writer.
It is one thing to choose to go into a hospice; it's another thing to get on the air and tell everybody about it.
Men and women cannot live by bread alone. They must also tinkle. Show me someone who has no trouble tinkling, and I will show you a happy and rich person.
There was tremendous pressure to take dialysis, and there were lots of tears when I broke the news to the family that I was not going to do it.
I've known Don since he came to Washington. When he first came to work for George W. Bush, he was a different Don Rumsfeld. He was jolly, full of life, and ready to go to war, but only if we could win.
The Marine Corps was the first father figure I had ever known.
This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.Collection: Time
The things that matter most are not things.Collection: Humor
An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn't know any women.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Nature
People who live in glass houses have to wash their windows all the time.Collection: Glasses
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.Collection: Reality
I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get there, but I'm going first class.Collection: Class
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 weekCollection: School
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.Collection: Friendship
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?Collection: Beautiful
Don't commit suicide, because you might change your mind two weeks later.Collection: Suicide
I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?Collection: Real
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.Collection: Happiness
The best way to clean up a son's room is to close the door and pretend it's not part of the house.Collection: Son
This is what makes me happy: Remembering where I put my house keys.Collection: Keys
The best things in life aren't things.Collection: Love
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."Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Travel
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.Collection: War
Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.Collection: Depression
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.Collection: Sex