Passenger Interaction Quotes

This was 1978, when flying was still an occasion, a special grand event that took planning and care. I worked as a TWA flight attendant then. I stood in my Ralph Lauren uniform at the boarding door and smiled at the passengers through lips coated with lipstick that perfectly matched the stripe on my jacket. Mostly, the passengers smiled back.

On the plane, an eight-year-old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, 'Listen, darling, if you don't stop trampling me I'm going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.' He goes back to his seat.

It's not an Israeli model, it's a TSA, screwed-up model. It should actually be the person who's looking at the ticket and talking to the individual. Instead, they've hired people to stand around and observe, which is a bastardization of what should be done.

That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver’s head. ‘Hey, bus driver,’ I said. ‘Can I smoke?’ ‘May I,’ said the bus driver. ‘I love you,’ I said.

I've actually had a copilot come out of the cockpit on a trip from L.A. to New York and ask me about Charles Manson.

I wave to the double-decker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?

The little girl on the plane Who turned her doll's head around To look at me.

My idea of everything going smoothly on an airplane is (a) that I not die in a slow-motion fiery crash or get stabbed to death by terrorists and (b) that none of the other passengers try to talk to me. All conversation should end at the moment the wheels leave the ground.