Neverisms Page 15

  Never reveal what you know first.

  Ask questions to gather information

  to see if it’s consistent with what you already know.DAVID J. LIEBERMAN, in Never Be Lied to Again (1999)

  This advice occurred in a section about getting information from another person, especially when that person might not be cooperative.

  Never assume that habitual silence means ability in reserve.GEOFFREY MADAN

  Never assume that anyone who asks,

  “How are you?” really wants to know.DAVID L. MCKENNA, in Retirement Is Not for Sissies (2008)

  Stimulated by some neverisms in Dave Barry Turns 50, McKenna, a former college president, compiled a list that was true for him at age seventy-five. You’ll find a few more McKenna quotations in other chapters, but here are several more from his book:

  Never deny a woman who says that she has nothing to wear.

  Never ask the doctor, “If I were your son, what would you do?”

  Never answer “yes” when someone stops

  in the middle of a joke to ask, “Have you heard this one?”

  Never forget the power of silence,

  the massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on

  and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.LANCE MORROW, in a 1981 Time magazine essay

  Never answer an angry word with an angry word.

  It’s the second one that makes the quarrel.W. A. “DUB” NANCE

  Nance, a real estate agent and Methodist minister, served for a number of years as “corporate chaplain” of the Holiday Inn hotel chain. In the 1970s, he and a nationwide network of clergymen provided crisis counseling and spiritual guidance to hotel guests. In The Civility Solution (2008), P. M. Forni echoed the theme: “Never respond to rudeness with rudeness.”

  Never do a friend a dirty trick.GEORGE JEAN NATHAN, from his “Code of Life”

  I’ve long admired people who can describe a personal code of life in a few well-phrased lines. Nathan, a celebrated American theater critic, did this in a spectacular way in his 1952 book The World of George Jean Nathan. I think you’ll enjoy the complete piece, which also contains a few other neverisms:

  My code of life and conduct is simply this:

  work hard, play to the allowable limit,

  disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others,

  never do a friend a dirty trick,

  eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like,

  never grow indignant over anything. . .

  learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private,

  never allow one’s self even a passing thought of death,

  never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone

  unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin,

  live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities,

  treat one’s enemies with polite inconsideration,

  avoid persons who are chronically in need,

  and be satisfied with life always but never with one’s self.

  Never tell anybody anything

  unless you’re going to get something better in return.SARA PARETSKY

  The words come from V. I. Warshawski, Paretsky’s tough-talking female private eye, in Deadlock (1984). She called it “Rule number something or another.”

  Never try to outsmart a woman, unless you are another woman.WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

  If you’re a man, the implication should be clear. Phelps, a noted scholar and professor of English at Yale for forty-one years, was famous for his pithy observations and clever remarks.

  Never try to make any two people like each other.EMILY POST, in her classic 1922 book on etiquette

  Never ask a single woman, “Why aren’t you married?”RONDA RICH

  In a 2010 article in Georgia’s Gwinnett Daily Post, Rich said the question can be flattering when asked by a man who is sending the message, “So, how on earth is it that you’re not married yet? What is wrong with the men of this world?” But when a woman, especially a married woman, asks the question, the message is usually, “What’s wrong with you?”

  Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  This is a popular quotation, but I have not been able to verify it. Mrs. Roosevelt is one of the most quoted women in history, but many sayings attributed to her are slightly altered versions of what she actually said or wrote. For example, she is also widely quoted as saying, “Never turn your back on life,” but this has not been found in her writings or speeches. The closest I’ve seen appeared in the preface to her 1960 autobiography, where she wrote, “Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

  Never try to look into both eyes at the same time.

  Switch your gaze from one eye to the other.

  That signals warmth and sincerity.DOROTHY SARNOFF

  Sarnoff was a successful opera singer and Broadway star who launched an even more successful second career as a speech coach and image consultant to business executives, celebrities, and politicians. In 2008, her obituary in the New York Times said, “She helped President Carter to lower the wattage of his smile.” Her 1987 book on public speaking was titled Never Be Nervous Again.

  Never believe anything a person tells you about himself.

  A man comes to believe in the end lies he tells about himself to himself.GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, quoted by Stephen Winsten

  in Days with Bernard Shaw (1949)

  This is the way the line appeared when it was first presented to the world, but many quotation books present it as “Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself.” The reason for this now seems clear. In Cass Canfield’s Up and Down and Around: A Publisher Recollects the Time of His Life, the longtime president and chairman of Harper & Brothers appears to have misremembered the Shaw remark, presenting it this way: “Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.”

  Never persist in trying to set people right.HANNAH WHITALL SMITH, in a 1902 letter to a friend

  This is the concluding line to one of my all-time favorite quotations. It begins: “The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not.” Smith, a lay follower of John Wesley, became a suffragist and temperance activist. She was the mother of the writer Logan Pearsall Smith.

  Take as many half-minutes as you can get,

  but never talk more than half a minute without pausing

  and giving others an opportunity to strike in.JONATHAN SWIFT, attributed by Sydney Smith

  The earliest reference to this popular quotation was in an 1870 book, The Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith. Smith, a prominent English writer and cleric, was well known for his wit. The book describes the saying as “His favourite maxim (copied from Swift).” So far, though, I have been unable to find this observation in Swift’s complete works.

  Never use damaging information to invalidate your adversary.JOSEPH TELUSHKIN, in The Book of Jewish Values:

  A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living (2000)

  Rabbi Telushkin added: “This rule is simple, but breaking it is what so often transforms moderate arguments into furious quarrels, the kind that lead to permanent ruptures between friends or family members.”

  Never refuse any advance of friendship,

  for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.CLAUDINE GUÉRIN DE TENCIN

  In the early 1700s, Madame de Tencin maintained a Paris salon whose guests included such famous men as Baron de Montesquieu and Lord Chesterfield. For most women of the era, career options were severely limited, leading some of the most enterprising to form salons as a way to advance their social standing.

  Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor;

  he will always use it in evi
dence against you.HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE

  This was reported in a 1956 biography of Tree by Hesketh Pearson. The older brother of the famed English caricaturist Max Beerbohm, Tree was an English actor and theater manager who went on to found the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1904. He may have been familiar with a similar warning advanced two centuries earlier by the esteemed French writer and aphorist Jean de La Bruyère:

  Never risk a joke, even the least offensive and the most common,

  with a person who is not well-bred, and possessed of sense to comprehend it.

  Never rise to speak till you have something to say;

  and when you have said it, cease.JOHN WITHERSPOON

  Witherspoon was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who was persuaded in 1768 to come to America to serve as president of the struggling College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University. As a Scotsman, he was often suspicious of the English crown, and he quickly became sympathetic with the grievances of the colonists. He was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

  Never suspect people.

  It’s better to be deceived or mistaken, which is only human,

  after all, than to be suspicious, which is common.STARK YOUNG, quoting his father

  nine

  Never Approach a Woman from Behind

  Sex, Love & Romance

  In August of 2004, celebrity ghostwriter Neil Strauss was thrilled to learn that his most recent literary project—Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale—had opened at number three on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was his third bestselling “celebrity bio” in six years. At age thirty-five, Strauss was already being described as one of the most successful ghostwriters in publishing history.

  After graduating from a private high school in the Chicago suburbs in the late 1980s, Strauss headed east with dreams of becoming a writer. While a student at Vassar College and Columbia University, he honed his skills by writing scores of articles for newspapers and magazines. After college, he landed a job at the Village Voice, where he performed whatever menial tasks needed doing—fact-checking, proofreading, writing ad copy—in order to occasionally write a piece that carried his byline.

  Though months would go by without one of his stories being published, Strauss didn’t get discouraged. His persistence paid off when several of his pieces were noticed by honchos at the New York Times. Strauss soon began writing pieces on music and pop culture for the Times, and shortly after that for Rolling Stone. It was a heady time for the aspiring writer. Still in his twenties, he was developing a national reputation—and garnering a few industry awards along the way—for his profiles of such cultural icons as Madonna, Tom Cruise, Kurt Cobain, and Marilyn Manson.

  Shortly after the Marilyn Manson profile appeared in Rolling Stone, Strauss received a call from Manson’s agent, asking him if he would consider ghostwriting a book for the rock star. Strauss eagerly accepted, and over the next several months developed a whole new approach to writing celebrity autobiographies. Instead of spending hundreds of hours poring over tape-recorded interviews, Strauss immersed himself in Manson’s life: living in his L.A. mansion, traveling with him on tour, partying with the musicians and their groupies, and in general becoming a fly on the wall of the performer’s life. He said of his method:I need more than just a voice on tape. I really need to be around that person all the time so I can see what their life is like. And if I’m ghostwriting, I need to be able to write how they would write if they could write.

  Strauss’s around-the-clock presence in Marilyn Manson’s life, combined with his ability to gain the rock star’s trust, resulted in The Long Road Out of Hell, a 1998 celebrity autobiography that directly paralleled another famous journey through hell: Dante’s Inferno. The book, which revealed dark and disturbing elements of Manson’s past as well as softer and more vulnerable sides of his personality, was critically acclaimed, and Strauss was soon being hailed for breaking new ground in the genre (a Rolling Stone review said, “There has never been anything like it”). The Manson book marked Strauss’s first appearance on the New York Times bestseller list, and was soon followed by three more bestselling celebrity ghostwriting projects: The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, by Tommy Lee and other members of Mötley Crüe (2001), Don’t Try This at Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro (2004), and also in 2004 Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.

  As Strauss was putting the finishing touches on the Jameson book, he was approached by his editor about looking into an online community of pickup artists who claimed they could turn an “average frustrated chump” into a “chick magnet.” The idea appealed to Strauss both professionally and personally. As a short, balding, bespectacled, shy, workaholic writer, he saw the assignment as a way to fix a longstanding problem in his life. He later said:I went into that community of pickup artists . . . not as a writer but as a guy who (like millions of others) had problems with women in his life and was too scared to approach women or was always the guy caught in friend-zone.

  After laying out $500 to attend a weekend workshop for aspiring pickup artists (PUAs), Strauss came face-to-face with the workshop leader, a Toronto magician who went by the name of Mystery. Mystery was anything but handsome. According to Strauss, he looked like a combination of a vampire and a computer geek. But his incredible success with women had made him a kind of deity in the PUA community. Intrigued by Mystery’s tales of seduction, Strauss decided to study at the feet of the master. Within a few months, he moved into a Sunset Strip mansion with Mystery and a number of other master PUAs, adopted the nickname Style, and began to apply his workaholic research skills to his new assignment.

  Strauss quickly learned such tricks of the trade as “the three-second rule,” which says a man must approach a woman within three seconds of seeing her (wait any longer, the rule goes, and you may chicken out). Early in his research, Strauss also learned another important principle:

  Never approach a woman from behind.

  The rule was explained: “Always come in from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you may walk away at any minute.” As Strauss’s learning progressed, he was provided with additional rules:

  Never give a woman a straight answer to a question.

  Never hit on a woman right away.

  Start with a disarming, innocent remark.

  Never begin by asking a question that requires a yes or no response.

  At the end of a year, Strauss learned his lessons so well that he became one of the most successful PUAs in his strange little fraternity. He ultimately told his “Ugly Duckling to Prince Charming” tale in The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, a 2005 memoir that became another New York Times bestseller.

  Guidelines about sex, love, and romance—expressed neveristically—have also been authored by women. Some of the best have come from Cynthia Heimel, a columnist for many years at Playboy and the Village Voice. In Sex Tips for Girls (1983), her first book, Heimel provided this rule:

  Never, under any circumstances, ever go to bed

  with a man you’ve just met in a bar.

  Or any man you hardly know. No matter what.

  There is no equivocation in this advice. Earlier in the book, though, Heimel had a little fun answering the question “Should you sleep with a man on the first date?” She immediately answered, “No, you should not, no matter what.” But then, after proclaiming, “This is a hard-and-fast rule. There are no exceptions,” she concludes unexpectedly: “Unless you really want to.” Her book also contained other admonitions, some expressed in unforgettable ways:

  Never ask if it’s in yet.

  Never, ever talk about how good you are in bed.

  Never try to establish a successful flirtation when your hair is a mess.

  Never spend more than an hour and a half cleaning your apartme
nt for a fellow.

  You must never fake an orgasm.

  Faking an orgasm is an act of self-degradation.

  No area of life is filled with more mistakes and missteps than the world of sex, love, and romance. As a result, there are few arenas filled with more cautionary warnings, dissuasive advice, or proclamations about what one should never do. Let’s continue our look at them in the rest of the chapter.

  Never confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.”CLEVELAND AMORY, quoting an anonymous

  father’s advice to his sons

  Never be rude in a bar, because the guy you snub tonight

  could be your job interviewer tomorrow.DAN ANDERSON & MAGGIE BERMAN, in the 1997 book

  Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man

  Never date a man prettier than yourself.ELIZABETH ANDERSON

  Never let the little head do the thinking for the big head.ANONYMOUS

  Often described as “advice to teenage boys,” these words have been delivered by countless fathers, coaches, and other authority figures speaking frankly to hormone-driven young men. The saying has been around for many decades, but it always enjoys a resurgence of popularity when a powerful or high-status male falls from grace after an embarrassing or calamitous affair. There are a number of other anonymous neverisms in the category of sex, love, and romance. Here are some of my favorites:

  Never use the word “fine” to describe how a woman looks.