Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows.

It was time enough for whole lives to have been led and misled. It was time enough, as the poet said, to murder and create—or at least, to have warranted the dropping of a question on one’s plate.

But I didn’t want to share them. Because I didn’t want to dilute them.

Yes, Tinker looked poor in that picture. He looked poor and hungry and without prospects. But he looked young and vibrant too; and strangely alive.

The ghosts on the subway, tired and alone, were studying my face, taking in those traces of compromise that give aging human features their unique sense of pathos.

His face was fuller, and it had a suggestion of pragmatic world-weariness, as if a string of successes had towed along an ugly truth or two.

letting the aura of our good fortune linger.

Which is just to say, be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you.

Old times, as my father used to say: If you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish.

Place No Trust in Appearances.

If we earn fifty cents an hour, we admire the rich and pity the poor, and we reserve the full force of our venom for those who make a penny more or a penny less.

Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee.

To the unpracticed eye they all looked of a piece—exhibiting a poise secured by the alchemy of wealth and station. But aspiration and envy, disloyalty and lust—these too were presumably on display, if only one knew where to look.

If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I’d have been shooting them all my life.

In a single stroke, he was going to shed every aspect of his life that was sensible, familiar, and secure.

Once a year, a city’s architectural, cultural, and horticultural variables come into alignment with the solar course in such a way that men and women passing each other on the thoroughfares feel an unusual sense of romantic promise. Like Christmastime in Vienna, or April in Paris.

For the first hour, it was a gradual incline and we walked shoulder to shoulder through the shade at an easy pace, conversing like friends from youth for whom every exchange is an extension of the last, regardless of the passage of time.

Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you—that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets—from having made choices with . . . such poise and purpose. It stopped me in my tracks a little. And I just couldn’t wait to see it again.

Life is full of misleading signals.

Yes. Rebuses and labyrinths.

Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion—whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment—if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say.

I guess there are two sides to every story. And, as usual, they were both excuses.

It was suddenly inconceivable that he had seemed so attractive. In retrospect, he was so obviously a fiction—with his monogrammed this and his monogrammed that.

I suppose we don’t rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment—a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.

Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.

at any given moment, we’re all seeking someone’s forgiveness.

Time has a way of playing tricks on the mind.

One by one, they had glittered and disappeared,

I could almost feel something dying inside him. And what was dying was his self-confident, unquestioning, all-forgiving impression of me.

If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, he said, then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.

When I think of the last few years, I’ve been hounded by regrets for what’s already happened and fears for what might. By nostalgia for what I’ve lost and desire for what I don’t have. All this wanting and not wanting. It’s worn me out. For once, I’m going to try the present on for size.

Dearest Kate, You have no idea what it has meant to me to see you these last two nights. To have left without speaking, without telling you the truth, would have been the only regret I carried away. I’m so glad that your life is going well. Having made a hash of mine, I know what a fine thing it is to have found your spot. It was a rotten year of my own making. But even at its worst, you always gave me a glimpse of what might otherwise be. I’m not sure where I’m going, he concluded. But wherever I end up, I’ll start every day by saying your name. As if by doing so, he might remain more true to himself.

One day he would regret having left them behind. I looked forward to being in a position to return them.

Some of you will think this a romantic thing to have done. But at another level, the reason I went back for Tinker’s things was to assuage a sense of guilt. For when I had walked in the room and found it empty, even as I was fending off a sense of loss, a slender, vigorous part of myself was feeling a sense of relief.

For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise—that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.

Even if we wanted to retrace our steps and rekindle our old acquaintances, how could we possibly find the time?

Tinker was where the view to the horizon was unimpeded, the crickets commanded the stillness, the present was paramount, and there was absolutely no need for the Rules of Civility.

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

To have even one year when you’re presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character, your course—that’s by the grace of God alone. And it shouldn’t come without a price.