Never ask old people how they are
if you have anything else to do that day.JOE RESTIVO
Never start offshore oil exploration unless you know the drill.DENNIS RIDLEY, offered shortly after the BP
oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010
Never buy a fur from a veterinarian.JOAN RIVERS
Rivers has also been quoted as offering these additional thoughts:
Never floss with a stranger.
Never let a panty line show around your ankle.
Never play peek-a-boo with a child on a long plane trip.
There’s no end to the game.RITA RUDNER
This came from a Rudner sketch that ended this way: “Finally I grabbed him by the bib and said, ‘Look, it’s always gonna be me!’ ”
Never jog while wearing wingtips—
unless you are attending the Nerd Convention in Atlantic City.MARK RUSSELL
Never do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to the paramedic.SHANNON RYAN
Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them.RICHARD STRAUSS, one of his ten rules for young composers
Never look down on short people.GREG TAMBLYN
Never answer a telephone that rings before breakfast.JAMES THURBER, in Lanterns & Lances (1961)
Thurber added: “It is sure to be one of three types of persons: a strange man in Minneapolis who has been up all night and is phoning collect; a salesman who wants to come over and demonstrate a combination Dictaphone and music box that also cleans rugs; or a woman out of one’s past.”
Never say “oops” in the operating room.DR. LEO TROY, orthopedic surgeon
Never learn to do anything.
If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.MARK TWAIN, quoting facetious advice from his mother
Never run after your own hat—others will be delighted to do it.
Why spoil their fun?MARK TWAIN
Never pick a fight with an ugly person; they’ve got nothing to lose.ROBIN WILLIAMS
Never wear a backwards baseball cap to an interview
unless applying for the job of umpire.DAN ZEVIN, advising Generation-Xers, in
Entry-Level Life: A Complete Guide to Masquerading
as a Member of the Real World (1994)
two
Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
Words to Live By
In 2003, Marlene Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, made an unexpected gift to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston: thirty previously unpublished letters that her mother had received from another icon of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway. The bequest stipulated that the letters were to be kept private until 2007, fifteen years after Dietrich’s death.
Hemingway and Dietrich first met on the French ocean liner Île de France in 1934. As the years passed, when they were occasionally seen together, she reverentially called him “Papa,” even though he was only three years her senior, and he called her “my little Kraut” or, as he also did with many of his other female friends, “daughter.”
When the letters—written between 1949 and 1953—were made public in 2007, they set the literary world abuzz. Hemingway fans had long known of the pair’s deep friendship, but few expected the depths of passion revealed in the correspondence. Hemingway was fifty when he wrote his first letter—and married to fourth wife, Mary—but he expressed his feelings like a lovesick teenager. In one letter, he wrote, “I love you and I hold you tight and kiss you hard.” And in another, “Every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home.”
Dietrich wrote back with equal ardor. In a 1951 letter that began with the salutation “Beloved Papa,” she wrote:I think it is high time to tell you that I think of you constantly. I read your letters over and over and speak of you with a few chosen men. I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly.
Despite the obvious passion, the pair were not lovers. At one point, Hemingway offered a fascinating explanation to his friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner:We have been in love since 1934 . . . but we’ve never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes of hers, I was submerged.
In Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (1966), Hotchner reported that Dietrich deeply respected Hemingway’s thoughts and opinions. In one conversation with Hotchner, she paid Hemingway a beautiful tribute:He is always there to talk to, to get letters from, and in conversation and letters I find the things I can use for whatever problems I may have; he has often helped me without even knowing my problems. He says remarkable things that seem to automatically adjust to problems of all sizes.
Dietrich went on to describe a telephone conversation she had with Hemingway. It began innocuously enough, with Papa simply asking how things were going. She told him she had recently received an offer to perform at a Miami nightclub but was not sure she wanted to accept it. The offer made by the club was lucrative, she explained, but her heart was simply not in it. When she thought of refusing the offer, though, she found herself wondering if she was just “pampering” herself. Her explanation was met with a moment of silence on Hemingway’s part, after which he said, “Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do.” And then he added:
Never confuse movement with action.
Hemingway’s words immediately cleared up any doubts Dietrich was having about the decision. But it was her comment about the admonition that has been remembered to history:
In those five words he gave me a whole philosophy.
There are periods in all of our lives when we are especially receptive to the influence of others. During these times—often called teachable moments—a handful of words can so dramatically impact our lives that they literally become words to live by. That’s what happened to Dietrich. In five perfectly phrased words delivered at exactly the right moment, Hemingway provided Dietrich with a working philosophy she could use as a guide for the rest of her life.
Almost all of the people I know can recall a specific time in their lives when they had their equivalent of a Dietrich-Hemingway moment. In Norman Vincent Peale’s 1965 book The Tough-Minded Optimist, the legendary preacher and writer recalled a time shortly after graduating from college in 1920. Filled with fear and easily intimidated by the people around him, he was in great danger of failing at his first job as a cub reporter for the Detroit Journal. One day, as he was sitting in the office of Grove Patterson, the newspaper’s editor, Peale revealed his self-doubts to his boss. Recognizing that the young man needed a wake-up call, the crusty editor pointed a blunt, ink-stained finger directly into Peale’s face and said:
Never be afraid of anybody or anything in this life!
As Peale retold the incident forty-five years later, he said something that so many people have said when recalling words to live by from an early period of their life: “I remember that statement as though it were yesterday.”
Some words to live by don’t hinge on the chanciness of a teachable moment but are carefully orchestrated by someone who is trying make sure a life lesson is learned. In his 1998 book Pushing the Envelope All the Way to the Top, bestselling author Harvey Mackay recalled an incident when he was eight years old. As he was sitting on the banister at the top of a flight of stairs, his father looked up and asked him if he would like to learn a lesson that might one day save his life as a businessman. Intrigued, young Harvey agreed. “Just slide down the banister and I’ll catch you,” said his father. Becoming slightly suspicious, Harvey said, “But how do I know you’ll catch me?” Mackay’s father comforted the young lad by saying, “Because I’m your father and I said I would catch you.” Reassured, Harvey slid to the end of the banister—only to land in a tumble on the carpeted floor. As Harvey rose to his feet, his father announced: