P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

There is no hell. There is only France.

I think comedy in the last 5-7 years is as good as it's ever been in America. I like it when people push it. You go through periods where people did not push the envelope. The more you push it, the funnier you get.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius - or French.

I went into a French restaraunt and asked the waiter, 'Have you got frog's legs?' He said, 'Yes,' so I said, 'Well hop into the kitchen and get me a cheese sandwich.'

I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

The French are people who think otherwise.

Canadians can be funny.

A lot of French comedy is satire.

I hunt deer because they aren't capable of higher forms of thinking. All they care about is, 'What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away'. They are very much like the French in that way.

Have you seen the Olympic uniforms? It's for the American Olympic team and it's berets. To me, nothing says America like a guy in a beret. Look at our founding fathers, they all wore berets.

Sometimes if I really want to get someone's attention, I'll start a sentence with something like, "I'm not racist, but..." I say, "I'm not racist, but you look great today." They say, "That wasn't racist at all." I said, "I know. I said I'm not racist. You never listen. Typical Mexican."

I just draw what I think is funny, and I hope other people think it is funny, too.

I think it's hilarious when middle-aged white men try to take themselves seriously. It makes me laugh.

I would like to break out of this "dark, brooding" image, cause I'm actually not like that at all. In Ireland, brooding is a term we use for hens. A brooding hen is supposed to lay eggs. Everytime somebody says "He's dark and brooding" I think: "He's about to lay an egg".

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself. I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, 'Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?' And I said, 'Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?'

I lifted my eyes to the heavens and asked for help because if God exists, there's no way he's French.

I said to the waitress, "There's a fly swimming in my soup." She said: "You've got too much soup - he should only be able to paddle."

You may be a redneck if . . . you think you are an entrepreneur because of the "Dirt for Sale" sign in the front yard.

People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.

I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out.

I think I realized that Dave Barry was funnier than I'll ever be, and he made no attempt to make any actual points. He had a general libertarian point of view, but in general, he just liked to make jokes.

I'm a big fan of reality shows. I thought the first one, Dukes of Hazzard, captured white people perfectly.

He was all emotion all the time, constantly talking about his feelings and his profound love for her. He was minutes from getting his first period. He wrote poems too. It's my personal belief that if men are writing poems, they're making up for something else like a big hair back, or one ball. Not that one ball is a bad thing. Especially since I don't know any females who are dying to their their hands on a set of balls. The way I see it, the less balls, the better.