Alexandra Petri Quotes
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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.
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Dull words are what make many bright sentences shine. They do not call attention to themselves.
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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.
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In general, sincerity is awkward.
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It is possible to assemble a narrative for yourself, brokenly, on social media, only seeing what you want to look at.
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President Obama deserves our unalloyed praise for hastening Osama bin Laden's demise.
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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.
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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.
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While MIT and the University of Chicago duke it out for the title of nerdiest school, James Franco and Renee Zellweger show up at Harvard to party. Somehow, miracle of miracles, Harvard is 'cool.'
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Woodstock didn't define a generation because everyone showed up or those who did were a perfectly representative sample. It defined a generation because, for a few days, it bottled its peculiar zeitgeist.
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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.
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People talk to pass the time, share information, and entertain each other.
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The difference between face-to-face conversation and any other medium of communication is simple: No distractions are permitted.
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Hi, my name is Alexandra, and I'm a netaholic.
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The problem with technology, as with fashion, is that it's impossible to be 'in' forever.
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If awkward has an antithesis, it is probably Barack Obama.
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It's easier to find the joke in something when you think, 'This - this is ridiculous.'
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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.
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Bad things happen, and you can only be so prepared.
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Anything you loved, however intensely, becomes mortifying the moment you cease to love it.