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.
Quotes to Explore
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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.
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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?
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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.
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I was never supposed to make it to Congress. I was a staff person.
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How long you live is less important than how healthy you are along the way.
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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.
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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.
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We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
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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.
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China needs a powerful Europe, but Europe can only be strong if each and every one of its members attains rapid economic development.
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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.
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Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.
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I dyed my hair pink when I was fifteen.
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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.
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A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.
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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.
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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.
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Well, we all have murderous thoughts throughout the day, if not the week.
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I'm not that ambitious any more. I just like my privacy. I wish I really wasn't talked about at all.
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There's only one thing that regularly keeps me up at night. Working with the greatest people in the world and knowing that they are counting on me to build a company that endures - a company where they can grow professionally. A company where they can build world-class products and be proud to work.
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I was a militant.
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It turns out that the Republican Party is not a hero to anyone but the racist, xenophobic caricature of a candidate that is Donald Trump.
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The more I know about America, the better I'll be at performing American characters and American stories.
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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.
