P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

I love storytellers. When I was growing up, my inspirations were watching Eddie Murphy, Dennis Wolfberg, and Louie Anderson. These guys were great at telling stories, and I made that my own style, talking about things that happened to me and trying to make them funny.

I don't have any writers. I never get a laugh with somebody else's jokes. I can't do it justice.

Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

I don't want to pick a team. I want to make people laugh and hopefully bring some - be humorous about the human experience, you know, whether they're people of any stripes of life.

Twitter is comedy writing. It's one-liners that give way to fully fleshed-out thoughts.

It's always been a dream of mine to write comedy and be creative.

New York is looked at as the grad school of comedy.

It's a different world: when I'm writing 'Toast,' I've got one foot in 1974 and one foot in the modern day, because the modern day is nowhere near as funny or interesting.

I know comedians who go on weird day trips in order to have random experiences they can talk about. They'll go on their own to Thorpe Park waiting for something hilarious to happen. That's really sad.

Using humor as a wedge into different kinds of stories is my go-to. I think anything I do would have some sort of streak of humor in it.

I never write jokes, I just try to make myself laugh.

I love comedy and I hope I never stop doing it.

I'll be 56 this year, I've got two kids, and I think it's probably time to go back to writing one-glove jokes.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

Comedy is a noble art.

Comedy started out as my hobby and then it became my profession. It's like being on call all the time, like having a built-in beeper. You can't just leave the office and relax because you never know when you'll think of something funny.

I love those people who do story-telling and who ramble on, but I don't do that, I tell jokes - the sort of jokes that anyone really could tell in the pub.

We live in a fun time with so many ways to express yourself, you would be crazy to be a comedian and not check them all out.

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

As a comedy nerd, I get a lot out of the podcast because I'm genuinely interested in the people I'm talking to.

I've found that there's a pretty wide range of silly. I don't want to do outright parody, because I like keeping my own characters and stories at the core of the books. And to be honest, I'm not smart enough to do the kind of wickedly sharp satire you get from someone like Pratchett.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.

The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.

If I had a choice, I would do comedy all the time. It's just the most challenging thing. To make someone laugh is the most challenging thing, and the most rewarding thing, in entertainment.