Dave Barry Quotes

There's no better way to process pain than to write.

I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.

One of the reasons that any person writes anything is to try and keep his own sanity together.

To be bowed by grief is folly; Naught is gained by melancholy; Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

You've got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.

Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary.

Any of the rewards or accolades or any of that are very nice and everything but the music is what saves me. And it did. I would write my way out of any kind of depressing period.

We need to learn to laugh at ourselves because when you don't laugh, you cry. And I don't feel like crying.

Things that I feel really sad about, I talk about. That way, if it's funny, it doesn't hurt anymore.

Creating something beautiful out of pain helps ease the pain. So, that's kind of how I got to songwriting - quite honestly out of desperation.

Instead of letting anxiety run you, try voicing it. Voice it in your comedy. Voice it in a script. Just voice it, and it'll help you release it.

I wrote 'Saved' as a form of therapy to get over the fact that I had moved and lost so much of myself.

A sense of humor is the main measure of sanity.

But I want to tell my stories, more than that, I have to in order to stay sane.

The writing is - I'm free of pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing.

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

I wouldn't say that cutting was pleasurable, but there is a sense of euphoria that follows cutting yourself. The quick pinch of pain and the sight of blood snaps you back to the surface and you start to appreciate being alive.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: baby-doll. Pulling on a sweater, and in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words?

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

I've often said to myself, "Thank God I can write, 'cause this is hilarious." I actually wanted to go into all that more in the book, but my editor thought it was too crazy.

I write books to relieve ­myself of pain. That's the prime motivator to write. Period.

You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't.