Alexandra Petri Quotes

The Earth will be around for a long time before you have a funnier president than Obama. He has a stand-up's cadence and the awareness and ability to make jokes about himself before comedians can. That's a page almost every politician should try to take from his book.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.'

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.

I've never been able to write for stand-up.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

Candidates in the future should be chosen based on their ability to sell themselves over the television airwaves.

George Washington didn't have to make us laugh; he just had to establish precedents and avoid chopping down more cherry trees than he could possibly help. But somewhere along the line, Americans began expecting their presidents to do more than just govern. They also had to make us laugh.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

I never went on auditions because I would be terrible at it, so I just did stand-up.

I'm not a natural comic, I don't think. That's why I gave up stand-up. It was hard. It involved a lot of death. Dying. Dying on stage. But it's one of those jobs you can only learn by doing it.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

But with voice-over on a reality TV show, I think I'm pretty up there, maybe one of the best. It's a confidence boost, which helps my stand-up because I'll try more interesting stuff.

The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.

I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.

Some issues are just too important to be left to an unscripted Joe Biden.

Not every President is a great speaker. Not every President is a great thinker. But in the modern era, every single President is a master of one thing: eye contact.

And then you've got President Clinton who made the case as only he can. After he spoke, somebody sent out a tweet- they said, you should appoint him secretary of explaining stuff. I like that- secretary of explaining stuff. Although, I have to admit, it didn't really say stuff. I cleaned that up a little bit.

One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.

For some reason I get advertised when I travel as a political comedian, which I'm not. Sometimes I talk about it and sometimes I don't.

Hillary Clinton doesn't command the screen. She doesn't look intimidating, inviting, engaging.