In September 2009, Mark Solomon was sitting in the front of his London taxi cab asking himself what life was all about, when a worldly-wise North American approached him and asked to be taken to the Brook’s Club in St. James’s. Impulsively, Solomon asked him what was the best advice he had ever been given. The passenger thought to a moment and then gently responded: “Think before you decide.”
The chance exchange so inspired him that Solomon decided to ask every passenger in the back of his taxi for a random quote or proverb. By the end of the shift, he was flabbergasted with the amount of positive feedback he had received. At first he jotted down passengers verbal responses on bits of scrap paper, but the following day he placed a clipboard on the back seat, with some A4 paper and a pen attached to it. This allowed passengers to think and write at their own leisure.
Within a week of his encounter with the North American man, Solomon had amassed a vast amount of quotes, proverbs and inspirational phrases and intrigued passengers started asking him: “Driver, are you going to write a book with all this material?”
“What had started out as a spontaneous question to a North American passenger had now evolved into something resembling a personal growth project, with my passengers insisting that I use the material to write a book,” says Solomon.
He first created a popular website (www.blackcabquotes.com) and has now come out with a book called Black Cab Wisdom that offers the best 400 thoughts for the day, ranging from the truly philosophical to the downright bizarre.