People think, mistakenly, that etiquette means you have to suppress your differences. On the contray, etiquette is what enables you to deal with them; it gives you a set of rules.

A wedding invitation is sent by people who have been saying, "Do we have to ask them?" to people whose first response is, "How much do you think we have to spend on them?

We have the reverse of the Puritan work ethic in America now. No one ever becomes a star by plugging along year after year. What is needed is flair, talent, 'an eye,' contacts, charisma, and, most of all, naturalness.

Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.

We are all born rude. No infant has ever appeared yet with the grace to understand how inconsiderate it is to disturb others in the middle of the night.

When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.