Delivered by mistake but to great applause bciore the International Polymer-Polypeptide Congiess last year In Kcw. When you talk situations through with others, they bring a different perspective. They ask questions that open up new thinking patterns and opportunities. They challenge bias and assumptions. They provide space and legitimacy to focus on you, which in itself can help the questions and answers to flow.

None of the above options are mutually exclusive. In fact I encourage you to consider them all. Many of my coaching clients also have a mentor, and are in a mastermind group and are part of the Lucidity Network. The warning is that when you embark on any of these, you have to want to change, be open to challenge and be prepared to take action. Hellman’s remark about Parker was discussed in her memoir. It also appeared in publications in 1968 and 1969. Detailed citations are given further below. At this point we would be forced to clarify our remarks by wiggling our fingers—now two on each hand, to signify “quote” marks, now just one on each hand, to signify socalled “single-quote” marks, or, as the British call them, Once she said to me — I quoted it at her funeral and found to my pleasure, as it would have been to hers, that the mourners laughed — “Lilly, promise me that my gravestone will carry only these words: ‘If you can read this you’ve come too close.'” There is evidence that Dorothy Parker did present this saying as an epitaph for herself. This information emanated from Lillian Hellman who was a long-time friend of the writer, and who acted as her controversial literary executor. Hellman delivered a memorial speech after Parker’s death during which she asserted that Parker desired a gravestone with the following message:Demincemenr’s title is drolls resistant to citation, even by a Frenchman, because even in Fiance, “qua,”qua Latin, should be set in reman (not to be confused with roman) within u title reference, since it is italicized outside title references. But if you don’t italicize the middle word of a three-word title that is bardic conventionally titular-looking to begin with, then what—as Demincement might put it —do YOU have? She was part of nothing and nobody except herself; it was this independence of mind and spirit that was her true distinction,” her longtime friend, Lillian Hellman, said at her funeral. Miss Hellman also said that Dottie wanted her tombstone to tell the world, “If you can read this, you’ve come too close.” Join a network – A place where you can benefit from the collective help provided by the membership. This might be your sector professional body, a Facebook group or something more structured like the Lucidity Network. Get a coach– Coaching is usually paid for and is a process that aims to improve performance and focuses on specific goals in the short term (rather than on the distant past or future). The role the coach as a facilitator of learning. However you read your label remember the same principle; it’s very difficult to work on your own problems on your own. Having someone who will listen, reflect, ask you questions, be candid and kind in challenging your bias and allow you time and space to respond is perhaps the most important gift you can give to yourself. What’s right for you?

Demincement also raises the question of “pain.” In Anglo-American print, it is unclear whether “pain” (or “’pain’”) is being italicized for emphasis or to show that it is French. For instance:One of the problems rigorous Quoism runs into, incidentally, is the impossibility, to date, of italicizing a period. I believe that everyone would benefit from having someone to help them read their label. That might be a coach, a mentor, a network or an accountability group. Different things suit different people (and different budgets). inverted commas.” Imagine how difficult it would be to express the statement “‘inverted commas’" (that is to say, the phrase “inverted commas” surrounded by . . ,1) by wiggling our fingers. Especially if the conversation were literally (so to speak) AngloAmerican—that is, between an Anglo on the one hand (so to speak), and an American on the other. The British, of course, use (’) to mean (”). It’s difficult for us to ask ourselves challenging questions. Sometimes we simply don’t want to admit that we’re wrong, and we’re fearful of what changing direction might involve. My secretary read the first few thousand words and announced “I wouldn’t have that book in my house!” I said “you’re throwing it away!” She said “Certainly not … I’m keeping it in the office.” She’s reading the stories at her desk with a sign behind her that says “If you’re reading this you’re too darn close.”

There lies the crux of Quoist theory. Beyond that, there is scant agreement even as to how “Quoist" is pronounced. Some feel it rhymes with “hoist.”Another pronunciation may be inferred from a recent sardonic reference to Deminccmentas “Jesus Quoist."' WHAT DO WE speak of when we speak of “literature”? Before beginning to “answer” that question, we must ask another question: “What do we speak of when we speak of‘What’?” This is itself a peculiarly written question, since it cannot be asked in conversation without leading to this sort of thing: “What?”I head this expression recently, and for me it sums up why asking help from others is so helpful and important ‘You can’t read the label from inside the jar.’ And what if we should work our way all the way through “What”? We would still have “do” and “we” and “speak” and “of” and “when” and a second, distinct, “we" and “speak” and “of" to clear up before we got to “ ‘literature.’ “ Furthermore, in a startling paper entitled “ ‘Q . . .,"8 Cue/Queue,” a brash young Johns Hopkins Englistician named John Hopkin may well have gone beyond Demincement himself. One fellow claims he even knows the message stencilled on the flying saucer. It says “If you can read this you’re too darn close… to knowing a top military secret.” Often the root cause of a problem and therefore the solution, is something so obvious we can overlook it. We are riddled with assumptions and bias that can stop us seeing something that is blatantly obvious to other people who are less close or involved in the situation. It was the great advance of Hercule Demincement, in his pioneer work Quoi qua ‘Quoi,' to show that even to say “Wh . . .” (“Qu . . .”) is to assume too much.2 Since then we have tended to speak of “ ‘What,’ ” for argument’s sake, as '"Quoi?” and of the work of Demincement and his followers as Quoism.3

Experts consider it unlikely that literature, “itself,” will ever catch up. Indeed, a consensus is growing, among the toughest-minded of a new generation of Quoists, that literature—not to mention, as Demincement has put it, ” ’literature,’ ( quote[single quote (quote-unquote) unsingle quote unquote)” ‘" -is an illusion.

The curiosity of a motorist on a country road was aroused by the lettering, too small to read, on the spare tire of a car ahead. Anxious to know what it said, he put his foot on the accelerator and read: “If you can see this you are too darned close for comfort.” Dear Quote Investigator: The witty author Dorothy Parker was once asked to suggest an epitaph for her tombstone. Over the years she crafted several different candidates, and I am interested in the following saying which can be expressed in multiple ways: