“I should have asked you to take off your shoes at the door—you know, Japanese style—and put your iPhone in your shoes! And turn it off, so it doesn’t ring. Someday maybe this’ll happen, but it’s not guaranteed to make someone like me very popular.”
V. Vale
more infosource: The Believer Logger, May 21, 2012
category: etiquette, socializing, technology
medium: Interview
via: Austin Kleon“I have a respect for people who do things with their brains and with their hands, who are not afraid of hard physical and mental work. I respect, too, people who are unpretentious yet mannerly, considerate and honest, forthright yet kind and tactful. I dislike display and foolish expenditure in the sense of what Veblen called ‘conspicuous waste,’ that is, spending to impress those who have less, as well as to impress associates. I dislike chi-chi.”
Amy Vanderbilt
more infosource: “Introduction to the Original 1952 Edition,” in The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Contemporary Living, revised and expanded by Letitia Baldridge (New York: Doubleday, 1978), xvii.
category: character, etiquette, money, respect, work
medium: Etiquette guide
via: Dorothy Ball!“My parents raised me never to ask people about their reproductive plans. ‘You don’t know their situation,’ my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold non-food.”
Tina Fey
more infosource: “Confessions of a Juggler,” The New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011, 65.
category: etiquette, parenting, reproduction
medium: personal essay
“I have been performing a long time, and I can tell when the audience’s attention is straying. I do not need a note.”
Steve Martin
more infosource: “The Art of Interruption,” The New York Times, December 4, 2010.
category: etiquette, interruption, performance
medium: Op-Ed
notes: Steve Martin wrote this Op-Ed (worth reading) in response to audience complaints at an event he took part in—an on-stage conversation with the art critic Deborah Solomon—at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. The conversation focused on art, not his career, and the audience thought it was boring. The Y offered refunds to its patrons. A few days after the event, Martin tweeted: "I am offering to erase my signature from signed books at 92nd St. Y."
etiquette