The Game: The Quotations

Below is a comprehensive list of my favourite quotations from The Game. My other favourites are included in the main entry. Some are surprisingly uplifting given the rest of the book, whereas others are simply entertaining. In the exact sort of chaotic fashion in which pickup artists often appear to live life, I've made no effort to differentiate them. Warning: Spoilers lie ahead. That's why this is a separate entry. Note that a startling number of these are courtesy of Mystery, who must have been one of the most fun interviews in the whole book.

"Nobody wants to sleep with a writer. They're at the bottom of the social ladder. You must be a superstar. And not just with women." -Mystery (55)

"...there is no such thing as failure, only learning lessons." -Neil Strauss, quoting a book called Introducing NLP (74)

"In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out." -Neil Strauss (114)

"Talking too fast is usually a sign of a deep lack of confidence... Such people usually become writers." -Juggler (115)

"Three percent [of people approached] respond with enthusiasm [when asked how they're doing]: 'great' or 'super'. Those are the ones you learn to stay away from. They're nuts." -Juggler (117)

"I was experiencing seducer's paradox: The better a seducer I became, the less I loved women. Success was no longer defined by getting laid or finding a girlfriend, but by how well I performed." -Neil Strauss (161)

"'When you can get any girl you want, every guy - even if he's rich or famous - looks at you in a different way because you have something he doesn't,' he said. 'But after a while, I'd bring girls home, and I didn't want to have sex with them anymore. I just wanted to talk. So we'd talk all night and bond on a very deep level, and then I'd walk them to the subway in the morning. That's when I started to leave it behind. I realized that I got my entire validation from women. Women became like gods to me, but false gods. So I went to find the real God.'" -Dustin (165)

"It's not that I'm scared of commitment; it's that I'm scared of arguing with someone I love over whose turn it is to the dishes, of losing the desire to have sex with the woman lying next to me every night, of taking a back seat in her heart to our children, of resenting someone for limiting my freedom to be selfish." -Neil Strauss (180)

"The idea of having many girls in many ports can be wholesomely nurtured." -Mystery (185)

"...most people in this world are not closers. They don't finish what they start; they don't live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they're afraid they won't find what they seek." -Neil Strauss (194)

"I want a woman I can respect for her art, like a singer or a super-hot stripper." -Mystery (233)

"Dad always wanted whiskey poured on his grave, so my brother said, 'I just hope he doesn't mind me filtering it through my bladder first.'" -Mystery (234)

"I look at you, and I just know that you were born to protect my sphincter." -Tyler Durden (236)

"Papa's face clouded. He didn't like the word no. He was an only child." -Neil Strauss (255)

"I feel strange and empty, like after a shit." -Mystery (329)

"Seduction was easy compared to [love]." -Neil Strauss (342)

"I'm not an insane maniac. I'm a poser insane maniac. I'm just dealing with the absurdity of existence by shoving absurdity down existence's throat." -Jlaix (353)

"And I was standing there just looking at that ass and that skin thinking, 'I deserve this.'" -Mystery (376)

"You can't handle not being the center of attention for even one minute. That is your tragic flaw." -Tyler Durden, to Mystery (382)

"Perhaps it was really shared emotion and experience that creates relationships, not seven hours of routines followed by two hours of sex." (395)

"[Lisa] lived by the advice most women hypocritically give to men; She wasn't afraid to be herself." -Neil Strauss (399)

"...the bros before hos ethic only exists if you think of the girl as a ho." -Mystery (404)

"I suppose we were all searching for the moves we needed to win at life, the knightly code of conduct, the ways of the alpha male*." -Neil Strauss (415)

"My dick, which I had thought was a completely mindless animal desperate to stick itself in any hole, actually responded to emotion. It had feelings too." -Neil Strauss (416)

"I was never interested in conquering women in a despotic way. I was interested in finding somebody to love." -Eric Weber (430)

"You're much too pretty to let get away." -a young Eric Weber, to his future wife (431)

"The new age couple contend that Tyler Durden and Papa skipped out after local authorities tried to deliver a summons charging them with running a commercial business in a residential zone." -Neil Strauss (449)

Then, of course, the word "sesquipedalian" is used by Strauss on the book's final page. (452)

Oh, why not...

Ease of Reading: 10
Educational Content: 10

*According to Mystery's criteria on page 21, I possess all six of the five factors of an alpha male. No, my math there isn't wrong.