Art Buchwald

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

"I like champagne—because it always tastes like my foot's asleep."

"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."

"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 doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him."

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

"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.""

"If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it."

"People ask what I am really trying to do with humor. The answer is, "I'm getting even." … For me, being funny is the best revenge."

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

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

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

"The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret."

"The bad boy tweaking the nose of the Establishment [with] the countenance of a Jewish leprechaun."

"What Art had was the gift of laughter — that's a rarity today. He could take simple ordinary things and make you laugh. God knows all of us need that. I've been with him in all kinds of situations, good and bad, triumph and tragedy but Art always was able to see a little wisp of humor in everything."

"Art was the Mark Twain of our time. For decades there was no better way to start the day than to open the morning paper to Art's column, laugh out loud and learn all over again to take the issues seriously in the world of politics, but not take yourself too seriously. The special art of Art Buchwald was to make even the worst of times better."

"The joy of his column was not that it was side-splitting humor, but that he made you smile."

"Three of us — Bill Styron, he and I — suffered depression simultaneously, so we walked around in the rain together on Martha's Vineyard and consoled each other... He did the best to make life palatable, to help you be optimistic, to let you know he believed you would beat it. We both did, and so did Bill. We named ourselves the 'Blues Brothers.'"