Evelyn Waugh on journalism

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson1743–1826

• Reading

I figured out why I’m not getting seriously rich. I write newspaper columns. Nobody ever makes newspaper columns into Major Motion Pictures starring Tom Cruise. The best you can hope for, with a newspaper column, is that people will like it enough to attach it to their refrigerators with magnets shaped like fruit.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry

You should never pick up a newspaper when you’re feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories with headlines like DOORBELL USE LINKED TO LEUKEMIA and OZONE LAYER COMPLETELY GONE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HOUSE.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry