P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.
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Quotes to Explore
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I've always had better luck learning things on my own. And I really love the challenge of doing it yourself and kind of being alone against the system.
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To me, presentations are the most powerful device. You can't really name a movement that didn't start with the spoken word.
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I could sum up the future in one word, and that word is 'boring.' The future is going to be boring.
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In Sweden, they broadcast the American shows in English with Swedish subtitles, whereas in many European countries they dub them. Watching those shows in English was big for me.
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It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.
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I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me.
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Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.
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Here in France, I've seen some very good young designers, but they don't have this ability to be good businessmen, too. I think America gives you this.
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As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
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Human nature is above all things lazy.
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No one can make me work harder than I do, so I'm generally not interested in who I am competing with.
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Our founders said that everybody mattered, everybody counted. But we all know that they didn't count everybody at the beginning. They did somehow have confidence that each generation of Americans would do a better job with it and would bring more and more people in from the margins and into the heart and soul of our democracy.
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Skateboarding was everything to us growing up. It changes the way you see the world: you spend all day looking for ditches.
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Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You've got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.
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Keeping your space clean is as much a part of the end result as the dish being tasty.
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I love comic books and I love anime.
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Music is like my security blanket.
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During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies.
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I do know a good singer when I hear one.
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I don't hurt or want for visibility, but people seem to forget pretty easily.
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My family deals with those risks. The best I can do is talk to them about some of those risks. I'm not incredibly specific with them, especially with my kids.
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Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
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Noah's wife, who said to him after 40 days and 40 nights, It's your turn to spread the papers on the floor! Never got a dinner!
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My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.