P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Dates used to be made days or even weeks in advance. Now dates tend to be made the day after. That is, you get a phone call from someone who says, "If anyone asks, I was out to dinner with you last night, okay?"

P. J. O'Rourke

• Night

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Quotes to Explore

• The economics of being a playwright are abysmal. I like to think of the work I do out in Hollywood as a way to actually make a life in the theater easier.

  

  Beau Willimon
  • Life
  • Work
  • Economics

• I think we know how to do Mars.

  

  Mae Jemison
  • Think
  • Know
  • Mars

• Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat' sold more copies in India than in the U.K. The market for go-getting business books or wonkish tomes by corporate moguls posing as philosopher kings has grown dramatically in modernising China and India.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • World
  • Business
  • Kings

• Do not tell somebody how to vote, just go up to them and tell them what Fahrenheit 9/11 meant to you. Fahrenheit will probably not win an Academy Award, but if you put it first on your list, it will become a nominee.

  

  Valerie Harper
  • Up
  • Win
  • Vote

• The college years are when you sow all your wild oats and become a vampire. By 40, you've lived it up. At least, you hope.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Up
  • Hope
  • College

• Once upon a time, I was a little girl sick in the hospital, and my mother gave me a copy of 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' to comfort me.

  

  Kate Forsyth
  • Time
  • Mother
  • Girl

• Music is pretty intimate stuff and I can only work with very few people: Gonzalez being one, Mocky being another and, on a completely different level, Broken Social Scene. With Broken Social Scene it's not one-on-one, it's a one-on-12. It's very healthy, very comfortable, like a big pot luck supper among old friends.

  

  Feist
  • People
  • Work
  • Music

• Taking B12 is the price of getting to be vegan, the way wearing a helmet is the price of getting to ride a motorcycle and giving up alcohol for nine months is the price of getting to have a baby.

  

  Victoria Moran
  • Up
  • Giving
  • Baby

• (On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

  

  Tallulah Bankhead
  • Time
  • Car
  • Thought

• A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard.

  

  Cal Ripken, Jr.
  • People
  • Long
  • Career

• Our pluralist society must provide its citizens with the tools to understand religions, their symbols and their practices.

  

  Tariq Ramadan
  • Society
  • Understand
  • Tools

• I feel really connected to antiquity for some reason.

  

  Nazanin Boniadi
  • Reason
  • Feel
  • Connected

• I love to go to casinos with my wife. I play poker, and she's an old-fashioned slot queen. She even has a visor.

  

  Patrick Wilson
  • Play
  • Wife
  • Queen

• I've been the best player on every team that I played on, so if I can't be the poster child of your team, then what else is it? It's got to be a black-white issue. Every white player I know who's the best player on their team is the poster child of that team.

  

  Gary Sheffield
  • Black
  • Team
  • Best

• You American people worry too much about the China economy. Every time you think China is a problem, we get better, but when you have a high expectation for China, China is always a problem.

  

  Jack Ma
  • People
  • Time
  • American

• Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.

  

  Mae West
  • Man
  • Protect
  • Wants

• I've decided to tell my kids things like: 'I love the way each of you tilted back your heads when you laughed.' I will give them specific stuff they can grasp.

  

  Randy Pausch
  • Kids
  • Like
  • Laughed

• The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Life
  • World
  • Grown

• Your No. 1 priority as a defender is to keep the ball out of the back of the net.

  

  Kelley O'Hara
  • Priority

• Here's the lily, here the roseHer full chalice shall disclose;Here's narcissus wet with dew,Windflower and the violet blue.Wear the garland I have made;Crowned with it, put pride away;For the wreath that blooms must fade;Thou thyself must fade some day, Rhodocleia.

  

  Maurice Baring
  • Pride
  • Blue

• I cook a little bit. I make a Hungarian dish called chicken paprikash that's out of this world. I'll give a heads-up to all of your readers that it doesn't have to be between Thai and Mexican every night. Toss some Hungarian in every once in a while. You will not be sorry. Good, solid peasant food.

  

  Adam Carolla
  • Up
  • World
  • Good

• You can only be as good as your audience. Sometimes you can be as bad as your audience, but you have to remember you can never be better than them.

  

  Bruce Forsyth
  • Good
  • Remember
  • Bad

• One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Emotions
  • Master
  • Again

• Dates used to be made days or even weeks in advance. Now dates tend to be made the day after. That is, you get a phone call from someone who says, "If anyone asks, I was out to dinner with you last night, okay?"

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Night