Don DeLillo Quotes

An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed, the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).

Every time I fill a vacant office, I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.

I've been in office and I've been out of office. And if I were to choose, I'd rather be in office.

All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.

I was never in the office [of Rolling Stone]. It was very different from Lampoon, where we spent a lot of time together socially, which is to say "drunk."

In every work environment, there will be politics. If you really want to rise to the top, you need to figure out what those politics in your workplace are. Then, you hook it in. You decide what conforms and what does not conform to your personal code.

I've met them down in the Cost and Accounting Department, clean-shaven and in white collars. They can't see a damn thing ridiculous about themselves... only about you.

I think I've always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole 'shut up and smile' theory. I haven't ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.

I think we've all worked with that person at the office who takes themselves and their job so seriously.

After college, I went to San Francisco and worked as a secretary in a reinsurance company. That was a pretty dismal job. It was a real small place. Guys would come in, and they'd sort of stick out their arms like wings so I could take their coats off. They'd tell me, 'Two,' and I'd put two lumps of sugar in their coffee.

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

I know what it's like and how hard my assistants work, and I try to treat them as fair as possible and make the office a fun environment.

Many of my staff have been with me for over 20 years. I have a great team, and I make sure they feel respected and appreciated.

If the only reason people are coming in and doing anything in your office is because you're giving them a paycheck, I'm not sure you have the most productive workplace there.

I don't like being told what to do and kissing you-know-what to get up the corporate ladder.

People think that when they come up to me, screaming things into my ear, that I will respond according to what they want. I'll turn around and smile and take the photo. But I'm not somebody's marionette.

No matter what the figures are in the workplace in terms of wages, you either feel a valued member of your staff, or you don't.

I've told stories about people coming to my office and giving me their coats and requesting that I hang them up and get coffee - which I dutifully do. And then I come in and sit at the head of the table. It's awkward.

There is nothing wrong with Radha Ravi calling women to his office. There's nothing wrong if a man calls women to his office. There is something wrong if a man calls men to his office.

I am sure having a baby around a working environment changes the tone a little bit.

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

I spend 90% of my time with people who don't report to me, which also allows for serendipity, since I'm walking around the office all the time. You don't have to schedule serendipity. It just happens.

People who have had power, when they become powerless, are really tragic.... We just allow ourselves to be conditioned by a society so we become as important as we're supposed to be.

At the end of the day, when you are in the front office, your tenure is dictated by the people surrounding you.

A few people have privately voiced fears that on coming back to office I shall go after them. These fears are groundless. There will be no paying off old scores. The past is prologue.