Top 50 Art Buchwald Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we have.”

— Art Buchwald

2. “The things that matter most are not things.”

— Art Buchwald

3. “Don’t commit suicide, because you might change your mind two weeks later.”

— Art Buchwald

4. “When I got to the hospice I was under the impression it would be a two- or three-week stay. But here I still am, six weeks later, and I’ve gotten so well Medicare won’t pay for me anymore.”

— Art Buchwald

5. “People who live in glass houses have to wash their windows all the time.”

— Art Buchwald

6. “The best way to clean up a son’s room is to close the door and pretend it’s not part of the house.”

— Art Buchwald

7. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

8. “An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn’t know any women.”

— Art Buchwald

9. “As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.”

— Art Buchwald

10. “Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.”

— Art Buchwald

11. “I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get there, but I’m going first class.”

— Art Buchwald

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

12. “I’m working when I’m fighting with my wife. I constantly ask myself-how can I use this stuff to literary advantage.”

— Art Buchwald

13. “The irony of our culture is that people are constantly telling other people to go to hell, but no one tells them to go to heaven.”

— Art Buchwald

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

— Art Buchwald

15. “This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.”

— Art Buchwald

16. “I earned my stripes as a Marine, and the Corps gets full credit for straightening me out. At 17, I was young, I was unhappy and most of all, I was undisciplined. The Marine Corps was the right service in the right place at the right time.”

— Art Buchwald

17. “No one ever mentioned it, but thousands of men welcomed World War II as a way to escape their humdrum lives rather than a chance to fight for God and country.”

— Art Buchwald

18. “New York was the glamorous town that you only see now in old movies and on Broadway stages. The sky was lit up with dancing neon signs. It was safe to walk out in the streets.”

— Art Buchwald

19. “I know it’s very egocentric to believe that someone is put on Earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was.”

— Art Buchwald

20. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

21. “I have no idea where I’m going but here’s the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?”

— Art Buchwald

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

22. “Ascot is so exclusive that it is the only racecourse in the world where the horses own the people.”

— Art Buchwald

23. “When it came to writing about wine, I did what almost everybody does – faked it.”

— Art Buchwald

24. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

25. “I learned quickly that when I made others laugh, they liked me.”

— Art Buchwald

26. “If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.”

— Art Buchwald

27. “Dying is easy; parking is impossible.”

— Art Buchwald

28. “Television has a real problem. They have no page two.”

— Art Buchwald

29. “I didn’t go on dialysis because I was 81 years old and I’d done everything I wanted, or so I thought.”

— Art Buchwald

30. “Television has a real problem. They have no page two. Consequently every big story gets the same play and comes across to the viewer as a really big, scary one.”

— Art Buchwald

31. “I worship the quicksand he walks in.”

— Art Buchwald

32. “I contemplated suicide. My main concern was that I would not make the New York Times obituary page.”

— Art Buchwald

33. “Over the years I have met a lot of important people, but no one as important as Elvis Presley.”

— Art Buchwald

34. “Writing humor in my column isn’t as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.”

— Art Buchwald

35. “While my friends were discussing Pearl Harbor as the country’s problem, I took it personally. It dawned on me that the Japanese attack could be my ticket out of high school.”

— Art Buchwald

36. “I can now say without hesitation the Marine Corps was the best foster home I ever had.”

— Art Buchwald

37. “I like champagne because it always tastes as though my foot’s asleep.”

— Art Buchwald

38. “This is what makes me happy: Remembering where I put my house keys...”

— Art Buchwald

39. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

40. “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 does not drive, there is something wrong with him.”

— Art Buchwald

41. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

42. “Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.”

— Art Buchwald

43. “The powder is mixed with water and tastes exactly like powder mixed with water.”

— Art Buchwald

44. “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.”

— Art Buchwald

45. “Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.”

— Art Buchwald

46. “I became a hero to everyone because I didn’t take dialysis and was still alive.”

— Art Buchwald

47. “I just don’t want to die the same day Castro dies.”

— Art Buchwald

48. “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 week.”

— Art Buchwald

49. “I’ve found it’s harder for the family of the patient to accept what’s happening. In most cases – not all – the dying person has accepted his fate.”

— Art Buchwald

50. “On the whole I woke up in the morning and was happy to be alive.”

— Art Buchwald