Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them.

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so...

How do I know you’re not crazy?” she asks. “How do I know you’re not the craziest dude I’ve ever met?” “You’ll have to test me out.” “You have my info,” she says. “I’ll think...

She hardly ever began conversations with strangers just to talk. It was not a matter of shyness. For her, a conversation had a straightforward function. How do I get to the pharmacy? or How much...

She said that you–” “I don’t care what she said.” I stand up. “Everyone lies.” “Hey,” he says softly. “It’s just a code.” “No. Everyone lies.” I stub the cigarette out. “It’s just another language...

If you drink the good wine of the noble countess, you have to entertain her less desirable friends.

Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.

How then did it work out, this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking?

Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or...

I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them–one or two of them particularly– almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt...

Never miss a party…good for the nerves–like celery.

I never knew my father. I saw him at a party once, but he never walked over and introduced himself to me.

When at a networking event, there’s usually a guy alone in the corner talking to himself. That guy is me. Stop by and say hi. My nametag will say Bob, because even if you’re dyslexic...

Fine, fine, I’ll indulge in this ‘socializing’ thing you always rave about.