Dave Barry Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

  Dave Barry

  Running, Religious, Writing

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Greatest Hits”, p.201, Ballantine Books

• Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information which is how I got a good job in journalism.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Jobs, Writing

  Dave Barry (2009). “Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus”, p.48, Ballantine Books

• Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

  Dave Barry

  God, Writing, Stupidity

• Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Despair, Elements

• 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!

  Dave Barry

  Jobs, Writing, Thinking

• The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite...The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub.

  Dave Barry

  New York, Writing, Media

• Editorials are written by people who have agreed to have several strong opinions a day and to write them down, provided they do not have to sign their names.

  Dave Barry

  Strong, Writing, Media

• All these people helped make this book possible. But let me make one thing clear: If there are any errors or omissions in this book, these people are not responsible. In the end, there is only one person responsible for what I write, and that person, of course, is: Donald Trump.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Book, Reading

  Dave Barry (2009). “Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus”, p.10, Ballantine Books

• People don't think of writers as sex objects. The women who write to me and suggest that we ought to have sex usually turn out to be, like, eighty. And their letters always end with, "Just joking."

  Dave Barry

  Sex, Writing, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• Your job is to give people a reason to keep reading.

  Dave Barry

  Jobs, Reading, Writing

• Always remember that if editors were so damned smart, they would know how to dress.

  Dave Barry

  Smart, Writing, Editors

• Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov.

  Dave Barry

  Pain, Writing, Erratic

• I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Giving, Trying

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• There are terrific TV shows now. This is a golden age for TV humor, I think. There's an actual market there. Of course, I have no idea how you'd break in, but there must be a way. They have all these shows and they need jokes and somebody is writing them.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Thinking, Tv Shows

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• I report as a machine; I write as a person. That clear dichotomy softens the transition.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Transition, Machines

  "Secrets of a Two-Time Pulitzer Winner". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. June 30, 2010.

• The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Thinking, Plot

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work.... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.

  Dave Barry

  Jobs, Fun, Kids

• I really need to know where I'm going with fiction to write it in a way that at least I'm happy with. And I really think that a lot of fiction books end badly because terrific writers said, "I'll just figure it out" and plunge in, but have created so many problems that they are kind of impossible to solve. I mean, I'm talking really good writers do this and you can tell when they got to the end they either had to do something preposterous or they just don't really resolve things. So for fiction I spend a lot more time outlining and for humor I really don't do much of it.

  Dave Barry

  Book, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• When preparing your return, you should be sure to avoid common mistakes. The two most common taxpayer mistakes, states the IRS booklet, are (1) "failure to include a current address," and (2) "failure to be a large industry that gives humongous contributions to key tax-law-writing congresspersons."

  Dave Barry

  Mistake, Writing, Law

  Dave Barry (1994). “The World According to Dave Barry”, Outlet

• I feel like I have more experience with publishing humor than pretty much any editor I'm going to be dealing with so sometimes I'll get a little bit nuts if I write something I know is good a certain way, and some editor because of some restriction he has and wants to change it that I know is going to make it less funny that'll piss me off and then I'm inclined to go, "Well, hey I've been doing this a long time, maybe you should..." That doesn't happen that often, but I'm more likely to say that now than I would have been a long time ago. Because dammit, I'm infallible!

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Nuts, Editors

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• Every year I write a tax advice column and I used to always make fun of that. One year, one of my favorite IRS commissioners, I think his name was Roscoe somebody, wrote that one of the most often-asked questions by taxpayers was, "How can I contribute more?" Well, I tell ya, ol' Roscoe's really been doing situps under parked cars again. I've heard a lot of people ask a lot of questions about taxes, but I never heard anybody say, "How can I, the ordinary person, send more money for no reason?"

  Dave Barry

  Fun, Writing, Thinking

  "All I Think Is That It's Stupid". Interview with Glenn Garvin, reason.com. December, 1994.

• When I'm writing columns, it's - all I'm thinking about is jokes, joke, joke, joke, setup, punch line, joke, joke, joke. And I really don't care where it goes.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Thinking, Care

  "Dave Barry's Mix of Over the Top Humor, Seriousness Reflects 'Insanity' of Miami". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. February 7, 2013.

• It's very slow for me to create humor. It takes me a long time to write a humor piece. It takes days.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Long, Pieces

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• When I write my annual tax column, some ex-IRS agent will complain, "There you go IRS bashing again." They're always saying that they're just doing their job. Someone I know once said, "You could get another job."

  Dave Barry

  Jobs, Writing, Irs

  ""All I Think Is That It's Stupid": An Interview with Dave Barry". Interview with Glenn Garvin, reason.com. December, 1994.

• With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "Dave Barry's Mix of Over the Top Humor, Seriousness Reflects 'Insanity' of Miami". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. June 4, 2013.

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