Paulo Coelho Quotes

You don't look at each other on the subway.

I'm more the sort of person who doesn't like hugging strangers because we don't know each other, so we shouldn't.

I abhor nothing more than bumping into someone I know on the Tube.

I try to preserve whatever balance society has between public and personal life. I never try to eat on the subway. I never try to listen to loud music on the subway.

You don't need to have Asperger's to feel bewildered in a culture that relies so heavily on inconsequential chit-chat to grease the wheels of day-to-day life.

Standing facing the door in an elevator and pretending you're the only person there, no matter how crowded it is.

To avoid eye contact, kiss.

When someone watches us eating, we feel exposed. We might also harbor a suspicion that the person staring wants to steal food from our plate. The taboo, in any case, is long-standing.

The American sense of decorum is falling apart.

I don't mind if someone yells a motto out of their car at me. 'No touching! No touching!' No harm is done.

It would be more weird if people didn't stare at me or shout at me.

The whole art of flirting has simply disappeared. This probably will do further damage. If we're going to become so uptight that we can't say nice things to each other, then we've had it!

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk.

In London, people don't make eye contact; it's almost too provocative.

I was once sitting on a tube, and someone was playing my song so loudly through their ear phones next to me. I just stayed silent and chuckled to myself.

I can sit down with my sisters, and they can talk about my body in a certain way, and I will laugh about it with them. That's such a comfortable and loving relationship. But if a stranger I meet in a party makes the same comment, depending on their tone, that's not okay.

I can't make eye contact when people sing 'Happy Birthday' to me.

Privacy is not really a concept in Japan.

I don't mind it. My friends think it's kind of rude of the people to come up to me and treat me like an object.

You don't spit on people, especially people's corners.

If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.

I opted for the rear door, both as a courtesy and so she couldn't freak out about me showing up on her front doorstep for all of East Falls to see. Being the village pariah does make social calls most trying. -Paige

There would be some times where people wouldn't know how to act around me. Does he drink? Can I cuss? What can I do? And then there was other circumstances where it was, I just don't respect what you're trying to do.

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

Restaurants are minefields for the socially inept