Alexandra Petri

“I swear like a sailor, assuming the sailor in question died in 1800 and was really square.”

“In general, sincerity is awkward.”

“All the weird inconveniences of adult life that you thought they made up to lend excitement and color to episodes of 'Sex and the City' are, in fact, real.”

“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.”

“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.”

“At Harvard, where students tend to respond to real-world celebrities with the vague sense that they could do a better job themselves, the recipe for celebrity is complex.”

“I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.”

“You can be brilliant in some ways and despicable in others. You can be a clean, upright, moral individual in your private life who never swears, treats women with respect, and speaks highly of duty and honor - and go out every day and dedicate yourself to a cause that makes the world worse.”

“If you want to be famous because you do something well or badly, be it singing while fat or hitting balls of various shapes and hues, you have to be prepared to divulge. We live in the age of the chronic overshare.”

“All that time that we spend tweeting our thoughts and emotions to our next of kin, we could be writing the great American novel, starting a business, or just living.”

“The difference between face-to-face conversation and any other medium of communication is simple: No distractions are permitted.”

“As long as cantankerous old people have existed, they have complained that kids nowadays don't seem to know anything.”

“Once you start worrying, it's hard to stop.”

“I think, when you're doing a column and blogging every day, you get familiar with the sound of your own voice.”

“The biggest way to be productive is if you're procrastinating on another more important project.”

“I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for 'On Harvard Time,' which was a student TV show trying to be 'The Daily Show.' And I wrote a humor column for 'The Crimson' starting my sophomore year.”

“Good laughs melt out of memory pretty quickly.”

“A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but I think if the picture is made in MS Paint, the going rate might be slightly less.”

“You do not get gold stars for cleaning your toilet. In actual life, there is a depressing lack of stickers.”

“Stereotyped as convention-going, pocket-protector-wearing, chess-playing, infrequently-showering types, nerds are one of our society's most ridiculed groups. And, for a university with an international reputation as a bastion of intellectualism, Harvard is startlingly devoid of them.”