Al Barry Quotes

We are our stories.

All we have is compassion and stories.

Well, I like to know where I'm going before I try to get there. It's a mistake to try to execute a plan before you've thought of one, in my experience.

Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy.

My mother once told me, when you have to make a decision, imagine the person you want to become someday. Ask yourself, what would that person do?

My sense of the past is vivid and slow. I hear every sign and see every shadow.

Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way

There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures.

I think women are closer to God than we are. They walk right out there like they know what they're doing.

But if I hadn't shoved you off the boat back there, you'd be lost at sea now, wouldn't you? We'd all be lost! So thanks to me you're all standing on land."(Pirates, its a good thing they're idiots)

'Your brain doesn't process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.' 'I have a superior brain?' 'Uh, ' Eliot said, 'I wouldn't go that far.'

A writer is never just looking out of a window or staring into space. They are building a universe to share with the world

It was so close to October that Halloween was knocking at his heart.

If I can keep writing just one good page a day, I will have 15 published novels in my expected lifetime. Tick, tick, tick...

A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.

Lo, each subculture has its own language, and verily I am not a parody. You don’t believe me? Get with the program, crackpot!

Violent crimes had increased from 120 per 100, 000 in 1962 180 per 100, 000 by 1964.

For the first time on Planet Earth (in 1964 America), a nation was made up of more college students than farmers. An unheard-of 42% of high school graduates sought higher education.

Rebelling against the status quo was one of the definitions of conservatism.

Criminologists have documented that the amount of coverage a crime victim receives affects how much attention police devote to the case and the willingness of prosecutors to accept plea bargains.

As a man I’d been a cool customer. As a woman I was a hot tamale.

Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere.

Ask a burning question, get a burning answer

Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens.

Workers who pick the food we eat cannot afford to feed themselves.

You know who you are. You have always been other.

(President) Lyndon Johnson still snapped between exultation and insecurity.

Goldwater had never even considered a non-Arizonan. Like a man on his deathbed, he wanted to be surrounded only by friends.

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

Oh, the summer night / HAS A SMILE OF LIGHT / And she sits on a sapphire throne.

the lonely mind wanders.the happy mind goes.the weary mind travels.the thoughtful mind flows.

Goldwater hardly ever mentioned a statistic. He hardly ever used it EXAMPLE. He presumed you already knew what he meant. Reagan SHOWED you.

The mistake is to assume that the way it feels at the moment is the way it will feel forever.

The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.

I am a cypher...I carry no weight, no worth, no influence. I represent nothing. I do not exist.

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.

The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see.

Call me a proud American, if you want, but I truly believe that no other nation on Earth possesses the capabilities to put on a more powerful display of underwater mermaid patriotism.

Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

Outside everything was uncannily visible in the light of the full moon, but here in the dark shaded alleys the night was conscious of itself. ("The Moon Slave")

The underlying logic of sacrifice was always the same: In order to gain the god's goodwill, destroy what you value most.

I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.

This is the funniest book I’ve ever held in my hands. --Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humorist and author says about Radical Sabbatical

When you feel like things are out of control, you take control.Yeah, that's what you do. Take control.So, yeah.Oh, yeah.

[S]he was in a pretty crazy place, screaming and waving the bucket-knife around, spattered with blood from head to toe. Lee was lying on the floor, quietly pumping out his life through his throat.

Much of human progress has involved reducing the time and energy, as well as the number of processes we have to engage in and think about, for each of us to obtain the necessities of life.

Zen probably won’t solve a single one of our problems. What it might do is help us relate differently to what we consider problems.

When we attach to a problem, we make the problem worse. When we attach to a solution, we make the problem worse.

Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin' to love your kids even when they disappoint you.

How do I know that what I see as blue and what you see as blue are the same thing? Answer: We don't. We take it on faith.