Life & Wisdom Quote by Richard Armour

Conversation, in Armour's hands, becomes something you can grip too tightly. The joke is domestic: we all know the person who treats dialogue like a tug-of-war, clenching a topic, a grievance, a theory, a "funny story" until everyone else is reduced to polite nodding. By phrasing it as permission ("It is all right") followed by a gentle reprimand ("but you should"), Armour mimics etiquette advice while smuggling in a sly social critique. The line flatters your self-image as a reasonable talker, then nudges you to notice your own conversational white-knuckling.

The subtext is that conversation isn't property. "Hold" suggests possession and control; "let go" introduces an ethic of release: allow silence, allow someone else to steer, allow the topic to die without a ceremonial funeral. Armour's craft is in the physical metaphor. He turns an abstract social failure - monopolizing attention, refusing to yield - into a bodily habit. That makes the self-correction feel doable: unclench.

Context matters: Armour wrote in a mid-century American culture that prized geniality and "good conversation" as a mark of class, but also produced plenty of self-serious talkers (office bores, cocktail-party pontificators, the man explaining his own joke). As a poet-humorist, he isn't condemning speech; he's defending its rhythm. Conversations work when they have air in them. Without letting go, you're not conversing - you're holding court.