"Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once"
About this Quote
Bankhead’s “rule” lands like a cocktail napkin aphorism: breezy, wicked, and just disciplined enough to pass as wisdom. The joke is in the mock-moral framing. She isn’t advocating virtue; she’s advocating logistics. Vice is treated less as sin than as scheduling, a manageable workload. That pivot is the line’s engine: it borrows the stern voice of self-help and uses it to bless indulgence.
The subtext is classic Bankhead - glamour with teeth. By stipulating “two vices,” she admits one vice as the baseline, the cost of doing business in a life lived loudly. The wit also flatters the listener: you’re not a mess, you’re a curator. If you can’t resist temptation, at least be selective. It’s a punchline that doubles as image control, the kind of remark that turns scandal into brand.
Context matters. Bankhead was a stage-and-screen celebrity whose persona thrived on transgression, nightlife, and the cultivated chaos of pre-Code and mid-century showbiz. In a culture that demanded women appear decorous while selling them as spectacle, she weaponized candor. The line reads as self-protection in public: if you’re going to be judged, give the judges a better script. It’s also a sly acknowledgment of limits - not moral limits, but human ones. Even hedonism requires strategy, and excess, Bankhead implies, is best performed with a practiced sense of timing.
The subtext is classic Bankhead - glamour with teeth. By stipulating “two vices,” she admits one vice as the baseline, the cost of doing business in a life lived loudly. The wit also flatters the listener: you’re not a mess, you’re a curator. If you can’t resist temptation, at least be selective. It’s a punchline that doubles as image control, the kind of remark that turns scandal into brand.
Context matters. Bankhead was a stage-and-screen celebrity whose persona thrived on transgression, nightlife, and the cultivated chaos of pre-Code and mid-century showbiz. In a culture that demanded women appear decorous while selling them as spectacle, she weaponized candor. The line reads as self-protection in public: if you’re going to be judged, give the judges a better script. It’s also a sly acknowledgment of limits - not moral limits, but human ones. Even hedonism requires strategy, and excess, Bankhead implies, is best performed with a practiced sense of timing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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