Alexandra Petri Quotes
-
Worst case scenario, nothing I do has any value or purpose, but if I can make someone laugh, I'm at least as useful as a piece of quiche would be.
-
Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.
-
Good laughs melt out of memory pretty quickly.
-
Millennials give comics the kind of adulation past generations reserved for musicians. We respect Lady Gaga. But we'll travel hundreds of miles to touch the hem of Jon Stewart's robe.
-
If you're doing what you do because you love it, you have room to be happy for others. And that's a lot of fun, when you get down to it.
-
Serious beliefs are awkward, especially religious ones. It's not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just that people's real, heart-felt, deeply held beliefs are, well, 'not easy to handle or deal with, requiring great skill, ingenuity, or care' - in a word, awkward.
-
People talk to pass the time, share information, and entertain each other.
-
Anything you loved, however intensely, becomes mortifying the moment you cease to love it.
-
Any promising young white man rich enough to theoretically afford a giant oil painting of himself gets to remain young and innocent forever, and none of his actions have any consequences, whether there is magic involved or not.
-
No one has debates on Twitter.
-
It's easier to find the joke in something when you think, 'This - this is ridiculous.'
-
It is possible to assemble a narrative for yourself, brokenly, on social media, only seeing what you want to look at.
-
All the young voters who flocked to Obama in droves grew up watching 'The Daily Show' and the 'Colbert Report.'
-
I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.
-
When police are shutting down cameras, it is a sign that they know the truth is not going to be kind to them.
-
The difference between face-to-face conversation and any other medium of communication is simple: No distractions are permitted.
-
Bad things happen, and you can only be so prepared.
-
President Obama deserves our unalloyed praise for hastening Osama bin Laden's demise.
-
Nearly everything faith-related that I have done at Harvard has been followed by free food, from going to services at Harvard's Episcopal Chaplaincy to attending a day of interfaith discussion and dialogue hosted by the university chaplains in the fall.
-
The problem with technology, as with fashion, is that it's impossible to be 'in' forever.
-
I think, when you're doing a column and blogging every day, you get familiar with the sound of your own voice.
-
If awkward has an antithesis, it is probably Barack Obama.
-
Almost nothing anyone told me about Harvard has been accurate.
-
People feel compelled to continue reading and hearing the news. Sometimes, you just want somebody to be yelling at it with you as you're reading it. I think of that as my function.