If you've been taught to keep every part of you to yourself, don't expect people to come knocking on your door to run their hands over the choice parts-either for your pleasure or theirs.

Remember that that "rude awakening" which your parents and well-meaning relatives threatened you with as a kid is better than no awakening at all.

If you've been taught to keep every part of you to yourself, don't expect people to come knocking on your door to run their hands over the choice parts-either for your pleasure or theirs.

Clothes do not make the man; friends and engagement with life do.

Start a conversation with someone with whom you have "nothing in common" and no possibility of scoring with, networking with, or even seeing again. In other words, a conversation just for the civilized hell of it.

Hold the door for an old man. Old ladies can take care of themselves; they've been doing it long enough.

Take up something that you know will never bring you any returns except pleasure-in other words, allow yourself to live the way brilliant eighteenth century courtesans lived. Don't be afraid of having a decorative life, even if all the decorations come from you.