Alexandra Petri Quotes
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Dull words are what make many bright sentences shine. They do not call attention to themselves.
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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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The problem with technology, as with fashion, is that it's impossible to be 'in' forever.
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Harvard is a wondrously tolerant climate for debate and exchange among a wide variety of thoughts, backgrounds, and beliefs, but the voice of religion on campus is largely inaudible.
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President Obama deserves our unalloyed praise for hastening Osama bin Laden's demise.
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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.
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Success is like food caught in your teeth: much more noticeable when it happens to other people. If it happens to you, other people have to take you aside and say something.
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Wilde is an invaluable acquaintance. Often, in situations where I am required to appear witty, I simply steal large chunks from his works and attempt to pass them off as my own with minor modifications.
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No one has debates on Twitter.
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The desire for attention has become a primal need along the lines of food, water, and clothing.
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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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At college, everyone's milestones occurred in shared clumps. Everyone studied, caroused, won, lost - simultaneously. Life is not like that.
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When police are shutting down cameras, it is a sign that they know the truth is not going to be kind to them.
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Ferguson shows the power of social media. This could have not been a story. Or it could have just been a local story. Or it could have been something that we saw only from a distance, through the usual filters. Instead, it gathered steam.
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Hi, my name is Alexandra, and I'm a netaholic.
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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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Anything you loved, however intensely, becomes mortifying the moment you cease to love it.
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Books are wonderful. They are like people, except they mind less when you put them down and wander off to eat something.
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I think, when you're doing a column and blogging every day, you get familiar with the sound of your own voice.
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Awkward is a state of being.
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If awkward has an antithesis, it is probably Barack Obama.
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You do not get gold stars for cleaning your toilet. In actual life, there is a depressing lack of stickers.
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At Harvard, people like to impart the idea that you are a mover and shaker.