Robert Byrne (1) (1930–)

With quotes like:
"Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting."
and
"I think, therefore I'm single" -Liz Winston
this was a fun read.
However, it was definitely more adult than I would like and it was so cleverly full of itself that I was almost fed up with it at the end. Also, it didn't have page numbers which, oddly, bugged me.

As with most books of quotations, this one is not quite as wonderful as it believes. Some of these quotations honestly belong among the best things anyone ever said ("Shut up, he explained" or “Nebraska is proof that Hell is full, and the dead walk the Earth.” for examples). Most of them, however, are banal and not that great. Overall, a fun, quick read, but not even close to sublime. And the author should really have thought twice before he included his own quotes; that's the surest way show more to brand yourself much less of a wit than you imagine yourself to be, and a bit full of yourself, too, including yourself in a book of quotes containing H. L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Yogi Berra, among others. show less

Very humorous collection of quotations taken from a variety of people and whittled down to a very manageable number of the best. But don't look for any very serious or deeply metaphorical quotations here, this is strictly a book of off-the-cuff and/or witty one-liners. The most difficult thing to deal with was the "stream of consciousness" way that Robert Byrne chose to organize all of the quotations. There is an index at the end of the book, but those of us who hear the word "fluffy" and show more think "pillow", may be confused by Byrne's answering with "rabbits". show less

Some of the quotations are good, some are funny and overall the book is an amusing read (unusual for a book of quotations, in my opinion). The one thing that I absolutely hated about this book is that the author has the gall to include several of his own quotations in a book in which he purports to collect the "637 best things anybody ever said." This would be excusable if the author were, say, Oscar Wilde - Mr. Byrne is no Oscar Wilde.