Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Arno

A pickup line disguised as a therapy session, Arno's quip skewers the modern hunger for intimacy while admitting how quickly that hunger curdles into entitlement. "Tell me about yourself" is the polite, socially approved opener: it performs curiosity, empathy, even depth. Then Arno tilts it into "your struggles, your dreams", the language of confession and self-help, where personal pain becomes a kind of currency. You can almost hear the faux-sincere cadence, the way someone leans in to harvest vulnerability.

And then comes the punch: "your telephone number". The joke lands because it exposes the transactional core hiding inside all that tender interest. The listener wasn't building connection; they were accelerating the pipeline from story to access. In one sentence, Arno captures a recurring American social script: intimacy as speed-run, authenticity as a tactic. The line doesn't condemn wanting someone's number; it mocks the manipulative shortcut of pretending that emotional depth is merely foreplay for contact details.

Context matters. Arno, a mainstay of The New Yorker, worked in a milieu that loved puncturing genteel manners. His cartoons often spotlighted the hypocrisies of the urbane class, where sophistication can mask predation, and wit can launder bad behavior into charm. Before dating apps turned "numbers" into swipes, Arno already understood the compression of courtship into a demand: give me your interior life, and while you're at it, make yourself reachable. The cynicism is clean, the timing brutal, and the cultural diagnosis still current.