The Best Quotes From “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”

When you read things from Red Pilled, Manosphere world, it’s surprising how much of it comes from a handful of sources repeated over and over. One of those sources is Neil Strauss, an outstanding writer who became a phenomenal pick-up artist. His book “The Game” is a great story, would make a terrific movie and there’s actually a lot of wisdom in there for guys. Here are the best quotes from “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.”

* “A man has two primary drives in early adulthood: one toward power, success, and accomplishment; the other toward love, companionship, and sex. Half of life then was out of order.”

* “A pickup artist must be the exception to the rule. You must not do what everyone else does. Ever.”

* After approaching the group, he continued, the key is to ignore the woman you desire while winning over her friends—especially the men and anyone else likely to cockblock. If the target is attractive and used to men fawning all over her, the pickup artist must intrigue her by pretending to be unaffected by her charm. This is accomplished through the use of what he called a neg…I don’t alienate ugly girls; I don’t alienate guys. I only alienate the girls I want to f*ck,” Mystery lectured.”

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* “An amateur hits on a woman right away,” he decreed as he rose to leave the hotel. “A pro waits eight to ten minutes.”

* “As we took the limo to the Key Club, Mystery told us the first commandment of pickup: the three-second rule. A man has three seconds after spotting a woman to speak to her, he said. If he takes any longer, then not only is the girl likely to think he’s a creep who’s been staring at her for too long, but he will start overthinking the approach, get nervous, and probably blow it.”

* “Never,” Sin admonished me in his adenoidal voice, “approach a woman from behind. Always come in from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you might walk away at any minute.”

* “I was in high spirits in the limo to the next bar. “Do you think I could have kissed her?” I asked Mystery. “If you think you could have, then you could have,” he said. “As soon as you ask yourself whether you should or shouldn’t, that means you should. And what you do is, you phase-shift. Imagine a giant gear thudding down in your head, and then go for it. Start hitting on her.”

* “No.” “Listen. Have you ever seen a cat play with a string? Well, when the string is dangling above its head, just out of reach, the cat goes crazy trying to get it. It leaps in the air, dances around, and chases it all over the room. But as soon as you let go of the string and it drops right between the cat’s paws, it just looks at the string for a second and then walks away. It’s bored. It doesn’t want it anymore.” “So…” “So that girl moved away from you when you put your arm around her. And you ran right back to her like a puppy dog. You should have punished her—turned away and talked to someone else. Let her work to get your attention back. After that, she made you wait while she talked to that dork.”

* “I ordered books on marketing, like Robert Cialdini’s seminal Influence, from which I learned several key principles that guide the majority of people’s decisions. The most important of these is social proof, which is the notion that if everyone else is doing something, then it must be good. So if you are in a bar with a beautiful female friend on your arm (a pivot, as they call it in the community), it’s much easier to meet women than if you’re hanging out alone.”

* “I’d learned from Mystery that one of the most important things to do with an attractive woman was to demonstrate value. In other words, what makes me any different from the last twenty guys who approached her?”

* “A pickup artist never gives a girl his phone number, because she might not call. A PUA must make a woman comfortable enough to give him her number. He must also avoid asking for it directly, because she could always say no, and instead lead her to suggest the idea herself. ‘I could give you my number,’ she offered.”

* “The PUAs have a name for this: They call it one-itis. It’s a disease AFCs get: They become obsessed with a girl they’re neither dating nor sleeping with, and then start acting so needy and nervous around her that they end up driving her away. The cure for one-itis, PUAs like to say, is to go out and have sex with a dozen other girls—and then see if this flower is still so special.”

* “Women, by and large, are much more perceptive than men. They can instantly spot insincerity and bullshit. So a great pickup artist must either be congruent with his material—and really believe it—or be a great actor. Anyone talking to a woman while simultaneously worrying about what she thinks of him is going to fail. Anyone caught thinking about getting into a woman’s pants before she starts thinking about what’s in his pants is going to fail. And most men fall into this category.”

* “If you can make a girl envy you,” Mystery told the students, “you can make a girl sleep with you.”

* “You asked how to tell if she’s ready. The way to tell is the other three-second rule. It works 100 percent of the time. While sitting close, just let the conversation trail off. Look her in the eye while you pause the conversation. If she looks back for a count of three seconds, she wants to kiss. The uncomfortableness you may experience is my favorite thing in the whole world—sexual tension.”

* “Most men make the mistake of believing that an attractive woman who doesn’t talk to or acknowledge him is a b*tch. Most of the time, however, she’s just as shy or insecure as the less attractive women he’s ignoring—if not more so.”

* “The first thing you say to a woman matters very little.”

* “I spent my early twenties trying to get to know girls by asking tons of questions—open-ended questions, smart questions, strange questions, the most heartfelt questions wrapped in beautiful boxes. I thought they would appreciate my interest. All I got was name, rank, serial number, and sometimes the finger. Interrogation is not seduction. Seduction is the art of setting the stage for two people to choose to reveal themselves to each other.”

* “One of the corollaries of Rick’s second rule was to never give a woman a straight answer to a question. So if a woman asks what you do for a living, keep her guessing: Tell her you’re a cigarette lighter repairman or a white slave trader or a professional hopscotch player.”

* “When she started laughing at all his jokes—even the ones that weren’t funny—he knew she liked him.”

* “You may have noticed that I haven’t been referring to these girls by their names. That’s because I never introduce myself during a pickup. As Mystery had taught me at that first workshop, I wait for the woman to introduce herself or ask for my name. That way, I know she’s interested.”

* “One of the primary rules of pickup is that a girl can fall out of love with you as quickly as she falls in love with you. It happens every night. The girls who start rubbing your chest and making out with you in a club in two minutes will leave you just as quickly for a bigger, better deal. That’s the game.”

* “The solution is to remember that the best way to pick up women is to have something better to do than to pick up women.”

* “Despite our supposed skill, mating is largely a game of chance. Women are at different places in their lives when we meet them. They may be looking for a boyfriend, a one-night stand, a husband, or a revenge f*ck. Or they may be looking for nothing at all, because they’re in a happy relationship or recovering from an emotionally destructive one.”

* “A side effect of sarging is that it can lowers one’s opinion of the opposite sex. You see too much betrayal, lying, and infidelity. If a woman has been married three years or more, you come to learn that she’s usually easier to sleep with than a single woman. If a woman has a boyfriend, you learn that you have a better chance of f*cking her the night you meet her than getting her to return a phone call later. Women, you eventually realize, are just as bad as men—they’re just better at hiding it.

* “In the past, I used to fall for ultimatums. But I’d since learned that ultimatums are expressions of powerlessness, empty threats designed to try to influence a situation someone has no control over.”

* “There is a downside to casual sex: Sometimes it stops being casual. People develop a desire for something more. And when one person’s expectations don’t match the other person’s, then whoever holds the highest expectations suffers. There is no such thing as cheap sex. It always comes with a price.”