Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

—Mr. Grey. We’ve been expecting you. Please. Right this way. He said the word Please as if it was a sentence unto itself. He led us to a table on the main floor. It was the only empty one in the room and it was set for three. As if he could read minds, the maître d’ pulled the middle chair out and motioned for Eve to have a seat. —Please, he said again. Once we were seated, he held a hand in the air and three menus materialized like giant playing cards in the hands of a magician. He delivered them with ceremony. —Enjoy.

In the blink of an eye the caption had gone from Man of means takes two girls to swanky spot to Young peacock shows off feathers in family’s backyard.

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.

After perusing the menu unnecessarily, he ordered soup and half a sandwich. Then, before turning to the book that was sitting beside his plate, he did what any of us would do: He surveyed the restaurant with a relaxed smile, satisfied that his food was ordered, his hour was empty, and all was well with the world.

It took me a moment to realize that it was the sound of relief. He sounded like one who is sitting on the curb in a strange city in the aftermath of a hotel fire, having nearly lost nothing but his life.

—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.

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. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to 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.

I was never the type to wait until Christmas morning to open gifts. If I’ve got a Christmas present in my grips on the Fourth of July, I’ll open it by the light of the fireworks.

—Just like heaven: full of fine folk who mind their own business.

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.

I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubt that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.