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

• To all, to each, a fair good-night, and pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.

  

  Walter Scott
  • Good
  • Night
  • Light

• We exist in this weirdly schizo culture, where sex is everywhere in the media, and yet, at the same time, you don't sit down and have a conversation about what you did in bed last night with your friends. Despite the ubiquity of sex, it's still a taboo when it comes to day-to-day conversation.

  

  Mary Roach
  • Time
  • Friends
  • Night

• Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool Is but in folly stable.

  

  Algernon Charles Swinburne
  • May
  • Fear
  • Faith

• I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school.

  

  Don McLean
  • School
  • High
  • Singing

• I really love my chosen craft. No matter whether it's disappearing or disappeared from the mainstream, that's really been where my mind and heart is.

  

  Charles Bock
  • Mind
  • Heart

• 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