Dave Barry Quotes

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards. I went to look at the billboards and decided that more billboards should be scraped.

I moved to New York - I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like '8 Mile.' I used to rap battle.

I am a native of Hollis, Queens, N.Y.

The whole world is covered in graffiti. No one cares. It's just part of urban noise.

I've been through all the bad parts of the streets.

When we got off the streetcar at Times Square, it was somewhat of a letdown. Newspapers were blowing about the road and pavement, and Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed.

There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent.

New York has always been going to hell but somehow it never gets there.

Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout.

If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any "spare" change.

A lot of people think that Jesus is coming back. That's fine, it's your right. But you know, I live in New York, and I think he's running a little late. I'm asking myself, 'Alright, what happens if Jesus comes back tomorrow? What - does he make rounds to churches?' 'OK, everyone who's been good, buses leave in 10 minutes. I'll meet you in front of the post office. I gotta go. Oh, don't tell the Jews I'm back.'

How about those Olympics, ladies and gentlemen. Didn't London look like the place to be? New York City was in the running for this Olympics. But here's what happened. We got outbribed.

I can think of a number of areas in New York where three acres of nuclear waste would make the neighborhood safer to walk around in than it is now, and better lit.

I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart.

The arresting officer, who I had literally known, all my life. You know what I mean? This guy lived four doors down the street me, in a town of less than four hundred people. *We've met.* Now, he takes me to jail, and he asks me if I have any aliases. And I was just being a smartass, and I said, "Yeah. They call me, "Tater Salad!" Seventeen years later, I'm handcuffed on a bench in New York with blood coming out of my nose, and this cop goes, "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?"

I was thinking back to all the time in the gym, working hard, and that spurred me on [winning New York marathon just ten months after giving birth

I hate sandwiches at New York delis. Too much meat on the sandwich. It's like a cow with a cracker on either side. "Would you like anything else with the pastrami sandwich?" "Yeah, a loaf of bread and some other people!"

When I was five years old I was on a merry go round. There was a gunshot nearby. The horses stampeded. There I was running down the street on a purple wooden horse.

The average life expectancy rate in some parts of Glasgow is 54. If you've ever been there, you'll realize that that's maybe a bit long.

I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.

Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.

When you first run up First Avenue in New York, if you don't get goose bumps, theres something wrong with you.