P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Somalia is so bad that making a mess improves the place.

P. J. O'Rourke

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Quotes to Explore

• Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

  

  Gabriel Byrne
  • People
  • Good
  • Character

• Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • People
  • World
  • Family

• In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

  

  Gail Sheehy
  • Children
  • Bad
  • Success

• When we bemoan the lost golden age of music, it's worth remembering that mainstream radio listeners of the '60s and '70s, particularly in Canada, missed out on an outpouring of brilliant R&B music.

  

  Dan Hill
  • Music
  • Age
  • Lost

• Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people.

  

  Ira Glass
  • People
  • World
  • School

• Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

  

  Samuel Goldwyn
  • People
  • Money
  • Why

• Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.

  

  Edmund White
  • Life
  • Real
  • Bad

• Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that's somewhat correct.

  

  Larry Page
  • People
  • Bad
  • Think

• I used to sit in front of McDonald's and ask people for dollars to get me a cheeseburger. It was bad.

  

  T-Pain
  • People
  • Bad
  • Me

• Black Sabbath invented heavy metal, in my opinion.

  

  Eddie Trunk
  • Black
  • Opinion
  • Heavy-Metal

• The people in the villages had turned in on themselves. You can understand it. When you have a bad day on the field, what do you do? Talk to your teammates.

  

  Ian Botham
  • People
  • Bad
  • Day

• Civil lawsuits do two important things: they compensate people who are injured by the bad acts of others, and they penalize people and companies for bad behavior.

  

  Adam Cohen
  • People
  • Important
  • Bad

• I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty.

  

  Harmony Korine
  • People
  • Life
  • Good

• A competitor will find a way to win. Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up. It's all a matter of pride.

  

  Nancy Lopez
  • Up
  • Bad
  • Pride

• The nature of the Catilinarian conspiracy was bad and bloody.

  

  Florence Ellinwood Allen
  • Bad
  • Nature
  • Conspiracy

• Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.

  

  Sallust
  • Bad
  • Measure
  • Precedent

• I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things, but I don't view those effects as good or bad. If a context and a goal is defined, I could say if it's good or bad. But overall, I don't view things as good or bad.

  

  Tao Lin
  • Good
  • Bad
  • Goal

• I never have written a movie, but there are some bad movies out there. I can make one. I definitely want to get into that because that's how you, at my level, would get a lead in a movie - by writing a low budget thing for myself. So I gotta get to it.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Writing
  • Bad
  • Movie

• I was a fan of One Direction when I was 16, but I was also a fan of Bring Me The Horizon and hardcore bands.

  

  Halsey
  • Direction
  • Fan
  • Horizon

• The sound was essentially background sound, myself, and Carl, Dennis and Al Jardine, Mike was our lead singer. The four of us put our voices together. We had done it really beautifully. We had a beautiful blend. We really did.

  

  Brian Wilson
  • Done
  • Together
  • Beautiful

• The best thing Jay-Z ever taught me was patience.

  

  Rita Ora
  • Patience

• The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.

  

  A. A. Milne
  • Thinking
  • Why
  • Depression

• More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key.

  

  Harlan Coben
  • Life
  • Real
  • Key

• Somalia is so bad that making a mess improves the place.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Bad