The backstory on the quotation is even more interesting. Morgan made her never turn down a job remark in 1918. A year later, in 1919, she was approached by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst about designing a small bungalow on a rustic property he owned midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He said to her:I would like to build something up on the hill at San Simeon. I get tired of going up there and camping in tents. I’m getting a little too old for that. I’d like to get something that would be a little more comfortable.
After a month of discussion, the architect and the magnate began to think more grandly about the project —which ultimately went on to occupy the next eighteen years of Morgan’s life! Today, Julia Morgan is best remembered as the designer of Hearst Castle, a luxurious 60,000-square-foot mansion with 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, and 19 sitting rooms. Formally named La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Hill”), it is now a U.S. National Historic Landmark and one of California’s most popular tourist attractions. And it all happened because this pioneering female architect followed her own admonition about never turning down a job because it was too small.
During my research, background stories like this were repeated time and time again. I found them so interesting that I felt I would be shortchanging readers if I did not share at least some of them. As you approach this book, then, remember that it is not just an anthology of quotations; it is an anthology about quotations as well—and the often fascinating stories of the people who authored them.
In my search for neverisms, I have cast my net far and wide. As a result, you can expect to find almost all of the most popular and familiar neverisms in these pages. But you will also find many quotations that you have never seen before, as well as many that have never before appeared in a quotation collection. Despite my goal of comprehensiveness, though, I’m sure that many deserving quotations have eluded me. If you have a favorite that is not included, please feel free to e-mail it to me at: DrMGrothe@aol.com.
I also have a website (www.drmardy.com ) where you can delve even more deeply into the topic of neverisms, learn more about my other books, or sign up for my free weekly e-newsletter: Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week. I have striven for accuracy but am quite certain that I have made some mistakes. If you discover an error or would simply like to offer some feedback, please write to me in care of the publisher, or e-mail me at the address above. I hope you enjoy the book.
Never Go to a Doctor Whose Office Plants Have Died
In 1965, Dave Barry graduated from Pleasantville High School in New York, proud of having been voted “Class Clown” by his schoolmates. Later that year, he entered Haverford College—a small, prestigious liberal arts college near Philadelphia—where he majored in English, played lead guitar in a local rock band, and wrote a regular humor column for the college newspaper.
Barry avoided service in Vietnam after he was declared a conscientious objector. He did two years of alternative service before beginning his journalism career in 1971, when he became a general assignment reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania. After three years writing about town hall meetings, sewage plants, and zoning regulations, he gave up his dreams of a journalism career to work for a firm that taught writing skills to business executives. If anything, this new job was even more mind-numbing than his newspaper gig, but it paid better, and Barry worked at it for nearly eight years before declaring his efforts to improve executive prose “hopeless.”
In 1981, Barry wrote a guest humor column on natural childbirth for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The article somehow landed on the desk of Gene Weingarten, an editor at the Miami Herald. Years later, Weingarten recalled, “I read it and realized it was the first time in my life I had laughed out loud while reading the printed word.” Weingarten convinced his bosses to hire Barry to write a regular humor column for the Herald. Within a year, Barry had one of the fastest-growing syndicated columns in America. In 1988, five years after coming to the Herald, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the only humorist to ever win journalism’s top award. Barry halted his weekly column-writing efforts in 2004, and has recently coauthored a number of fictional efforts with Ridley Pearson. Of his thirty books, though, Barry’s books of humor are my favorites, in large part because of his talent for finding humor in the most unexpected of places.
Never make eye contact.
This appeared in Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need (1991). In providing tips for getting maximum enjoyment out of a trip to New York City, Barry added: “This is asking to be mugged. In the New York court system, a mugger is automatically declared not guilty if the defense can prove that the victim has a history of making eye contact.” The passage is a perfect illustration of why the Pulitzer Prize committee lauded Barry for “his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns.” In the book, Barry also offered two “cardinal rules” for tourists:
Never go outside the hotel.
Never board a commercial aircraft if the pilot is wearing a tank top.
And “the number one rule” for people traveling to Europe:
Never pee in the bidet.
One of Barry’s most distinctive tricks is adopting a serious tone when first offering a piece of advice and then giving it a humorous twist in the explanation. In Dave Barry’s Money Secrets (2006), he begins a thought on teaching children the value of money this way:
Never allow a child to spend all of his allowance.
And then he explains: “Insist that he set aside a certain amount of money every week and put it in a safe place, where you can get it if you need to buy beer.” A bit later in the book, he does the same thing when offering rules for effective negotiating. He starts off by writing: “Never pay list price. I mean never. For anything, including intimate carnal relations with your spouse.” And then, in a footnote, he adds, “Just so you know: Your spouse usually charges $50.”
In Dave Barry Turns 50 (1998), there is a piece on pervasive drug use in the sixties and seventies by Jimi Hendrix and other rock stars. In citing what can be learned from the experiences of drugged-out celebrities, Barry cites “an old maxim,” but it seems pretty clear that he is the original author of the saying:
Never try to put all the chemicals in the entire world
in your body at the same time.
My favorite Barry neverism, though, appeared in his 2004 book Boogers Are My Beat. I had originally shied away from the book because of the title, but I’m glad I picked it up. As a proud North Dakota native, I was drawn to one column in particular. It began with these words:
My advice to aspiring columnists is:
Never make fun of North Dakota.
Barry explained: “Because the North Dakotans will invite you, nicely but relentlessly, to visit, and eventually you’ll have to accept. When you get there, they’ll be incredibly nice to you, treating you with such warmth and hospitality that before long you feel almost like family. Then they will try to asphyxiate you with sewer gas.” The column was inspired by a mid-winter trip Barry had made to Grand Forks, North Dakota, to participate in a dedication ceremony for a municipal sewage pumping station that had been named for him. I won’t go into the rest of the story here, but in several hundred words Barry may have written the all-time best description of life in North Dakota in the dead of winter.
Many websites and quotation anthologies have also attributed the following quotations to Dave Barry:
Never lick a steak knife.
