9 Insightful Quotes From Mystery

From The Pickup Artist (the book, not the show)

The living room inside Project Hollywood, Mystery’s former home and setting of “The Game” by Neil Strauss. Mystery moved out in the mid-2000s, and the West Hollywood mansion was demolished in 2013.

The enigmatic star of the old VH1 show The Pickup Artist (which first aired almost exactly eight years ago, and ended a year after that), Erik Von Markovik, better known as Mystery, wrote a book, also entitled The Pickup Artist, in 2010.

Despite being known for his myriad of scripted routines, Mystery used his book to promote a more natural style of meeting women. Here are nine of the best quotes:

1. “Even when a woman doesn’t go along with your move, don’t react in the slightest! Act completely normal. You’re just the kind of guy who likes to have fun and who doesn’t take anything too seriously”

Too many men act embarrassed, or tense up, when a woman doesn’t comply with his attempts to attract her.

2. “[Going out is] actually a fun thing to do, better than T.V. or a video game in my opinion”

Meeting women is viewed as work, or a chore, by a large portion of men trying to improve their dating lives. If you can’t learn to make the process fun, you’ll have a long, uphill battle.

3. “The more doors you knock on, the more will open. If you are wondering why you don’t have a girl, it’s because you stay at home too much. Go out three times a week and meet twelve girls a session”

Don’t complain that you’re single, or involuntarily celibate, when you never make the effort to meet women. It’s easy to get the results you want when you’re consistently meeting new people.

4. “How [should you treat nines and tens]? Like a normal friend. Like someone you can joke around with. That’s all they want”

Don’t put anyone on a pedestal.

5. “Use fun conversation to entertain and convey personality to both the obstacles and the target”

Don’t fall in the mode of asking an endless series of questions. You have to contribute to the interaction (i.e., compelling conversation or humor) to attract the attention of those with whom you speak.

6. “So you see, the reason it feels so weird when you try to make a move at the end of the night is that you waited too long; you should have been touching her the whole time”

Mystery went on to say that small, innocuous efforts to make physical contact with women while you’re speaking to them (i.e., touching their shoulders or arms) make it easier to build up toward more intimate forms of contact (i.e., kissing).

7. “Avoid drinking too much alcohol when playing the game. Alcohol is an excuse to alter your feeling of ‘fear.’ You decrease your statistical chances of success. Sober people have more reaction time with which to process information”

When you precede your attempts to meet women by drinking, you’re more likely to continually rely on alcohol.

8. “You might have thought it was a rejection, but in my experience, women often refuse the first kiss as a matter of course, and usually the door is even more open for you to kiss her again than it was before you tried”

An initial rejection isn’t always fatal. Don’t be overbearingly persistent, but don’t be afraid to give it another shot.

9. “Male competition: Yes, there are more guys. But they don’t smile. They don’t surround themselves with people and talk, talk, talk and laugh. They don’t walk around holding the smile on their face. They hold a beer on their chest and lean in and ‘look cool'”

Part of developing your ability to meet women is distinguishing yourself from other men. As Mystery points out, it doesn’t take much.