# Quote — Dave Barry, Tricky Business

> Despite countless hours of practice, dozens of auditions, many artistic disputes, seven demo CDs, and two radical changes in hairstyle, Arrival never arrived. It wasn't that they were bad; it was just that, as they reluctantly came to understand, they really weren't anything special. They were competent. The problem was, there were competent bands everywhere. Competence wasn't the key to stardom; you needed something else. Whatever it was, Arrival didn't have it. (Chapter 3)

- Author: [Dave Barry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry.md)
- Book: [Tricky Business](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/tricky-business.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dave_Barry#Tricky_Business_(2002)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [success and failure](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/success-and-failure.md), [talent](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/talent.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/tricky-business/despite-countless-hours

## More from this book

> The remote control had 48 buttons. No resident of the Old Farts Senile Dying Center knew how to operate it. They were the Greatest Generation, men and women who had survived the Depression, defeated the Nazis, built America into the greatest nation the world had ever seen. But this damned gizmo had beaten them. (Chapter 4)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/tricky-business/the-remote-control.md)

Topics: [old age](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/old-age.md)

> Once, when the bar was slow, he told her about things he'd found in his clients' pools. Alligators, for example; he'd encountered at least a dozen. Also the occasional snake. Hundreds of frogs. These were to be expected in South Florida, which as far as the native wildlife was concerned was still a swamp, no matter how many houses got built on it. (Chapter 7)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/tricky-business/once-when-the.md)

Topics: [nature](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature.md), [animals](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/animals.md)

> So for a while there, Eddie was one happy ship's officer. But like most men whose brains are in their dicks, he was not really thinking things through. (Chapter 5)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/tricky-business/so-for-a-while.md)