Humorous Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke's
The Bachelor Home Companion

(In the 1980s) Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadn’t even soloed on her broom.

(In the 1980s) Sleeping with the President meant you’d attended a Cabinet meeting.

Has anyone noticed the correlation between the hole in the ozone layer and the ever-increasing size of the bald spot on the back of Al Gore’s head?

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Home life in our society has already disintegrated. Small children come home to find their parents (which, step-folks included, can number as many as ten) gone to jobs, love affairs, racketball courts, or detox centers.

If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold! ~ Charles Lamb

Why does everything come in Giant Size, King Size, and Holy Roman Empire Size boxes? A package of macaroni as big as a Japanese car is not what I need.

Bachelor cooking is a matter of attitude. If you think of it as setting fire to things and making a mess, it’s fun. It’s not so much fun if you think of it as dinner.

Baloney, cheeseburgers, beer, and potato-chip dip provide all the daily nutrients bachelors are known to require. I mean, I hope they do.

My recipe (for simple omelettes): Add contents of refrigerator to two eggs and cook until everything stops wiggling.

Nomenclature is an important part of bachelor cooking. If you call it “Italian cheese toast,” it’s not disgusting to have warmed-over pizza for breakfast.

To give a woman the impression that your house is clean, use Pledge. Don’t use it on anything, just squirt some in the air. This makes it smell as though you’ve dusted.

Spill something fresh on the floor because a slippery floor is much more like a clean, waxed floor than a sticky floor is.

Every kitchen should be equipped with a dishwasher, preferably a cute one wearing her apron and nothing else.

I recommend having several refrigerators and putting everything in them. This way you’ll never run out of cold beer and your underwear will be nice and cool in the summer.

Excessively clean windows are dangerous and expensive. If you can’t see the glass panes, you may think the window is open and throw something through it.

Sheets can be kept clean by getting drunk and falling asleep with your clothes on.

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Favorite Long Quotes / Extracts...
Cleaning, like seduction, should be done from the top down – starting with the ceiling, which is ridiculous. Gravity takes care of that. If there were any dirt on the ceiling, it would fall off and land on the floor. The same goes for the walls. Dirt falls right off them and lands on the floor. And you shouldn’t fool around with the dirt on the floor because you’ll stir it up and it’ll get all over the walls and ceiling.

Living with your parents, like all forms of masochism, has its comforts. At least you know where trouble’s coming from and what form it will take (ditto for meals).

Never buy anything that already leaks. This is a good general principle in life and can be applied to human shelter, cantaloupes, flashlight batteries, jars of spaghetti sauce, used cars, babies, and most other stuff. In particular, don’t buy anything that leaks from the wrong end.

Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper.

There’s only one secret to bachelor cooking – not caring how it tastes.

If you were a cook, you’d know it already. You’d have one of those hats.

Blenders are good for making the kind of drinks that women don’t think are drinks and drink too much of.

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.

Vegetables are something God invented to let women get even with their children.

Tobasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.

A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money.

Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks.

A sweet tooth is a danger signal that you’re getting too much exercise and not enough cocktails.

Eating doesn’t make you fat. Marriage does. Compare waistlines of married and single friends for proof.

“Recipe – A series of step-by step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy in utensils you don’t own to make a dish the dog won’t eat the rest of.” ~ Henry Beard and Roy McKie, (A Cook’s Dictionary)

Health-food-store peanut butter is good only for cabinet-making repairs.

All bachelors – in fact, all men – think they know how to cook over charcoal, even if otherwise they can’t get cellophane off lettuce.

Emergency Tomato Soup : Made with hot water and ketchup. (Cold water and ketchup makes Emergency Bloody Mary Mix.)

This is the most elaborate and luxurious method of convincing others that you can cook. Take everybody out on your yacht until they’re green in the face. Then you can rave for weeks about your sauce marinara and no one will gainsay you.

“That which belongs to another." ~ Diogenes, when asked what wine he like to drink.

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Favorite Long Quotes / Extracts...
What would have happened if Paleolithic man had stayed in the cave all day, lightly braising mammoth chops? The women would have had to hunt mammoth, and you know how women are. Instead of just driving the thing over a cliff, they would have enticed their mammoth into a primitive barn stall, fed it leftovers, washed and curried it, and tied rawhide ribbons in its fur. Then, the next time you wanted to lightly braise some mammoth chops, the women would scream, “Kill Muffin?! How could you!” and start to cry.

Be a bully. When you invite your guests, they’ll say, “Is there anything I can bring?” Tell them, “Yes, a salad, a vegetable dish, dessert, and an eight-pound standing rib roast – medium rare.” Voila, dinner is served.

Whatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it’s very selective. It only kills the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint.

You don’t want your guests to get half-drunk. They might suddenly remember the baby sitter, try to drive home, and kill themselves.

Left completely to his own devices, the bachelor’s idea of interior decorating is a pyramid of empty beer cans on a window sill.

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
~ Hilaire Belloc

House – a construction of wood, bricks, cement, plaster, glass, wiring, and pipes, most of it put together wrong and the rest you’re going to ruin when you try to fix it.

Preparation is vital in painting. Be sure that whatever is going to get paint on it is properly prepared. What’s going to get the most paint on it is you. So you’d better have a drink.

Plumbing is easy – if you're a plumber. And if you were a plumber, you’d earn enough to have somebody else doing your home repairs, especially the plumbing.

The world would be a better place if it was half-dark, indoors, and air-conditioned. ~ Larry L. King

For toddlers I suggest leaving their mittens on year-round, indoors and out. That way they can't get into aspirin bottles, liquor cabinets, or boxes of kitchen matches.

Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOB’s given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren’t likely to argue about bedtime.

Many of us have stayed single well into middle life for fear that if we ever got married and had children we’d start making everybody, including ourselves, eat lima beans.