Quote

Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.

I've always noted with some awe the reading habits of the Australian public. Australians read more newspapers and magazines per head of population than almost any other country in the world.

Go to any bookstore, and you'll see thousands of books on etiquette, which suggests there's a lot of self-help going on. There is hope.

For years I've wanted to write about the Australian countryside, but, like most Australians, I've only got a tourist's knowledge of it. I thought that if I disobeyed that basic rule of writing - write about what you know - I'd write a thin and inauthentic book.

Is it possible that literacy standards are falling because young Australians are growing up in a culture in which they can be entertained and informed, and in which they can communicate effectively, without having to master any but the most rudimentary literacy skills?

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.

This book that I just wrote is going to be coming out very soon to Australia.

I am a journalist in the field of etiquette. I try to find out what the most genteel people regularly do, what traditions they have discarded, what compromises they have made.

Public service and respect for ideas is a recurrent theme in both the American and Australian sides of my family.

People say there's a book in everyone but I'm not sure there is. There might be a pamphlet in me.