P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

The Republican convention, an event with the intellectual content of a Guns'n'Roses lyric attended by every ofay insurance brokerin America who owns a pair of white shoes.

P. J. O'Rourke

• America
• Party
• Shoes
• Gun
• Insurance
• Lyric

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Quotes to Explore

• The point really is that a writer tends to write a book that he or she tends to write. It's as simple as that. Of course, it's important to make a living and all that, but the main impulse as far as I'm concerned - and I'm sure as other writers are concerned - is to tell a story that I feel impelled by.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Important
  • She
  • Book

• Gory stuff can be shocking but it doesn't really scare me. I'd say the kind of stuff that gets under my skin is the unknown. You hear a knock behind a wall and you don't know what it is. Is there something there or not?

  

  Oren Peli
  • Unknown
  • Scare
  • Shocking

• I've wanted to be an actor for such a long time that I haven't had anything else in my thoughts. I think my family would have quite liked me to be a lawyer.

  

  Ed Speleers
  • Time
  • Long
  • Family

• I was never supposed to make it to Congress. I was a staff person.

  

  Dan Maffei
  • Never
  • Person
  • Congress

• How long you live is less important than how healthy you are along the way.

  

  S. Jay Olshansky
  • Important
  • Long
  • Live

• I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection.

  

  Imre Kertesz
  • Experience
  • Me
  • Shame

• I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh.

  

  Ted Danson
  • People
  • Love
  • Guy

• We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

  

  Abraham Maslow
  • Fear
  • Know
  • More

• My first job was with an auto plant, Kansas City - they treated you like slaves. From there I went back to Chicago, worked in steel mills, drove a cab, stuff like that.

  

  Ed Asner
  • Job
  • City
  • Chicago

• China needs a powerful Europe, but Europe can only be strong if each and every one of its members attains rapid economic development.

  

  Victor Ponta
  • Strong
  • Powerful
  • Be Strong

• English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.

  

  Rachel Johnson
  • People
  • Believe
  • English

• Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.

  

  Taylor Caldwell
  • Death
  • Personality
  • Catholic

• When you're in college, you really don't know where you're going to end up, but you know who you want to be along that journey.

  

  Dan Rosensweig
  • Up
  • College
  • Journey

• In the first English class I attended, Prof. E. H. Elliot, addressing me, asked if I really belonged to the Junior B. A. class, and I had to answer him in the affirmative. He then proceeded to inquire how old I was.

  

  C. V. Raman
  • Old
  • Answer
  • Affirmative

• You have to persuade yourself that you absolutely don't care what happens. If you don't care, you've won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn't care is going to win.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • Man
  • Woman
  • Serious

• Well, we all have murderous thoughts throughout the day, if not the week.

  

  Daniel Day-Lewis
  • Day
  • Thoughts
  • Week

• I'm not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn't talked about at all.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Wish
  • Privacy
  • I Wish

• My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

  

  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
  • People
  • Work
  • Great

• I'd been watching documentaries about early rock where white artists took 'race records' from blues and soul musicians to achieve mass appeal. I wanted to flip that and do an EP covering only white artists.

  

  Anderson Paak
  • Soul
  • Rock

• He falls in the pit he digs for others.

  

  James Howell

• I used to joke that I came to England - not to the U.S. where most Koreans go - because I like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

  

  Ha-Joon Chang
  • England
  • Go
  • Joke

• The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

  

  Marquis de Sade
  • God

• Hypebeasts want shoes just to say other people don't have them.

  

  Fabolous
  • People
  • Shoes

• The Republican convention, an event with the intellectual content of a Guns'n'Roses lyric attended by every ofay insurance brokerin America who owns a pair of white shoes.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • America
  • Party
  • Shoes