Turn ‘Background’ People into Allies 

 
At social gatherings, we plain ole people, citizens and invited partygoers don’t ‘work rooms’ like 
politicians do. Instead we beeline toward those we know and like, those who are or might become 
important to us, and those who arouse our flirty glands. And we make perfunctory and sometimes 
grudging conversation with all others as we’re introduced. To us, most of those in that room remain 
‘other people at the party.’ 
 
That room full of people you instinctively regard as ‘background’ people, no more important to you 
than ‘background’ music or wallpaper, may contain precisely the clout and qualifications you need. Or 
could use. Or may need. Or may be able to use. They may be just the ones to marry you, enrich you, 
lift and color your life, or at least speak well of you whenever your name comes up. 
 
They will not bestir themselves to hoist your fortune in any of these capacities, however, if you let 
them remain as ‘background’ people. So why don’t you move out smartly and see how many allies you 
can enlist—not just by talking to them, but by talking to them in a manner calculated to make them 
talk. 
 

Accord Attention 
 
Some people manage to bore you while they’re praising you. It’s hard to get bored, though, when 
another person whose proven his worth by handing you a nice, original compliment seems genuinely 
interested in knowing more. 
 
We don’t all have equal money or power. But we all do have equal reserves of attention and the ability 
to accord it whenever and to whomever we select. Too bad most people roll along utterly oblivious to 
the power this ability to confer attention can bring. This ‘resource’ is too valuable to waste. It is 
precious fuel for the ever-hungry furnaces of conversation. 
 

Break the Glass 

 
Bring yourself to accept the awesome obligation of getting things started. One good burst of energy and 
effort to start a good conversation will send you on a flying motorcycle crashing through the brittle 
glass of boredom. That’s the only hard part: summoning up the moral reserves to say to yourself, “This 
party is going to be my entire life for the next ninety minutes. I can be bored or boring, interested or 
interesting. I can reach out and break that glassware that separates people, or I can stay here within 
my own glass cage and sulk. 
 

Penetrate the Ostensible 

 
There is no art to initiating conversation. There is an art to initiating ​meaningful ​conversation​. ‘​Small 
talk’—the heat, the rain, the ball game, the election, the media scandal—are excusable as openers; but 
if you don’t move quickly into richer talk turf, you’ll be stranded in an unmemorable exchange, 
exposing nothing unique about either of you. 
 

 
So Penetrate the Ostensible of what is on the collective mind. Whatever the news is, that is the 
ostensible story. Penetrate its surface-level truths and expose alternative premises, motivations, and 
storylines that may lie beneath the public perception. 
 

Look Attentive 
 
Encourage whoever is talking with your attention—by merely posing convincingly as a listener. If you’ve 
ever wondered how oxygen feels with all that power to make dying flames flare up again, you’re in for 
a moment. You’ll feel that identical power just by making up your mind you’re going to look attentive. 
Look attentive—that’s all—and you’ll know you’re the cause of that sudden surge of happy energy that 
overtakes whoever speaking. He simply not accustomed to listeners like you. 
 

Uncover the Remarkable 

 
We all consider ourselves multidimensional people. We see others, however, as unidimensional. They 
are all simple, non-differentiated, single-cell, single-cylinder Johnny-one-notes. Get off the game of 
small talk and make the new game: ‘How quickly can I ferret out your specialness and let you know I’ve 
spotted your multidimensionality?’ 
  
He sells insurance, and baffles antique mirrors in his basement workshop. She imports batik from 
Indonesia, and finishes near the front in every marathon for women over fifty. He’s in the advertising 
business, and scales glaciers in Greenland. 
 

Add Your Wrinkle 

 
Too many people regard being colorful or dull as immutable conditions. It rarely occurs to dull people 
(a) that they themselves are dull and (b) that they can do something about it. You ​can​. You can get 
colorful material the same place comics get colorful material. 
 
Am I flat out recommending you take jokes, lines, quips, proverbs, mottoes and aphorisms you see and 
hear and use them to make people think you’re brilliant? You bet I am—but with style, technique, 
judgement, flexibility, and ​honesty​. 
 
Let those with brilliance to say the things we wish we’d thought of first continue to say them. And let 
the rest of us learn to harvest those fruits and scatter those seeds, preferably with credit but giving 
them new reach and new life in any event. 
 
Whatever makes you say, ‘I wish I’d said that,’ is now part of your verbal ‘wardrobe.’ It’s you. Write it 
down. Then add your personal wrinkle—your adaptation—to its use. 
 

Cultivate a Mood 
 
 

We’re all more likely to say yes if we’re in the​ mood​ to say yes. The mood is best achieved not by 
exhortation but by ​conversation​; by talking in such a way as to make the other person want to talk 
back. That takes a little time. And that’s worth a little time. 
 
No language yet has a word for it, but we’re aiming to achieve a breakthrough; a forced 
communications chore into a free-flowing delight; a conversation you didn’t know how to begin into 
one you hope will never end. 
 
This will lead you to getting what ​you​ want out of a talk. If you want someone to say yes, don’t ask 
briefly and bluntly for what you want. Instead, take your time and cultivate a mood between you and 
that person; engender a relationship with that person that will make his ‘yes’ much more likely. 
 

Give Good Feelings 

 
When entering a conversation with someone of superior knowledge on a certain subject—an 
‘Intimidator’—make him know early on that your inclination is not to conceal ignorance, but to 
eliminate it. 
 
Show the Intimidator you’re sensitive enough to ask if he has time to contribute to your knowledge. 
Make the Intimidator talk to you about something he’s knowledgeable about. He will be given a good 
feeling being appointed ‘professor’, deputized as an expert in something about which he knew and 
cared. And that feeling you give him will, in return, give you the best head start toward accomplishing 
your immediate mission. 
 
Feelings are more important than meaning. People may not remember the meaning of what they 
heard, but they will remember the manner and mood in which it was communicated. Life is not an 
issues poll. Life is an approval rating. 
 

Probe Gingerly 
 
When a phony psychic works a client, he gingerly probes around through the client’s life, hoping to 
score with some good guesswork. He may say, “Your late husband had an interesting attitude toward 
animals.” The psychic is hoping for a bulls-eye, for which he’ll get credit. But in either case, he wins 
relevancy in the client’s eyes: when he’s right, the client will tell him more; when he’s wrong, the 
client will tell him what’s right. 
 

Women: Never Try to Impress 

 
Attractive women spurn wealthy, powerful, brilliant, talented, impressive men because they try too 
hard to make too much of an impression too quickly. They created the impression that those women 
couldn’t achieve great things for themselves. 
 
The secret to a woman’s affection is simply: never try to impress. 
 
 

I didn’t say, “Don’t impress.” I didn’t say, “Don’t be impressive.” I said, “Never ​try​ to impress.” You 
become truly impressive only when you’re not trying to be. 
 
The objective is to make that other person leave the encounter with you glad she had it and looking 
forward to more. The biggest error we make, especially in the case of men trying to make women want 
more, is supposing we have to impress. Wrong. Dangerous. 
 

Women: Don’t be ‘One of Them’ 

 
The overwhelming majority of the population have no wrinkles in their conversation. Their traffic is 
subject, verb, and object unmodified by colorful adjectives and adverbs. 
 
Some extraordinarily attractive women tell how they inwardly cheer for the ‘new’ man, the hunk who 
hasn’t said anything yet. They want him to open his mouth and say something, ​anything ​remotely 
clever; anything with a ‘wrinkle.’ And so often they just don’t. 
 

Women: ‘Pickup’ Constantly 

 
Starting a conversation with someone you spot on the street, in a plane or on a train strikes many as 
impossible and, in fact, undesirable. It has a bad name: pickup. But what kind of bigotry is it that 
suggests that those you’re officially introduced to are necessarily preferable to those you run across in 
your travels in between introductions? 
 
Linguists don’t use grammar only when interpreting at the United Nations. Singers don’t try to stay in 
key only during major performances. And conversation skills are much too important to be applied only 
when you think you may be in love. They should be honed and tested at all times. 
 

Women: Probe Intimacy Early 

 
In the old movies we knew when our protagonists were falling in love by the background music. By the 
time they fell into each other’s arms he, she, and we in the audience were all ready for it. Why wait 
that long in the real world to find out if that outcome is mutually desired? 
 
An unskilled attempt to achieve an Aperture of Intimacy—often executed as coming on much too 
strongly—is a major offense. With sophisticated men and women, though, the opposite—prudish 
avoidance of anything ‘personal’—can be almost as much of a disqualifying offense. 
 
Skilled attempts to reach that aperture help you (a) stimulate early real conversation with those who 
welcome it, (b) allow for gentle disengagement from those who don’t, and (c) make sure you waste no 
time telling the difference. 
 
A good technique is to try lots of cool talk about hot topics: husbands, wives, relationships, quarrels, 
jealousy, male and female roles, sex objects, pornography, eroticism and holistic health. Never let on 
that you’re talking ‘how about you and me?’, however, until you get a clear response from the other 
side. 
 

Women: Open Apertures Obliquely 

 
In opening Apertures, the shortest distance between two points is an angle. The drift is intentional. 
Apertures open most easily when the conversation veers into love, lust, passion, sex, marriage, 
scandal—but a short provocative comment is all that’s needed to test the waters. 
 
Is there ‘play’ in her reaction? Is there ‘give’? Is she comfortable? Is she enjoying it? Is she glad you 
brought it up? 
 
Women flirt. Women hint. Women invite response. Men move. 
 

Assume the Burden 

 
Force yourself to be conscious that there ​is ​a conversation locked up there somewhere between you 
and the person you’re allegedly ‘talking to’ and that it’s your job to find it, free it, and let it prance. 
You will sponsor the conversation. You will free the conversation. You will nurture the conversation. 
 
You don’t need an elaborate strategy or game plan. The lumps will melt, the stone walls will vaporize, 
faster and faster each time you remember one of our very first lessons, the most important one of all: 
Assume the Burden.