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Quotes from The Complete Neurotic's Notebook — Mignon McLaughlin

1913–1983

← All quotes by Mignon McLaughlin

279 quotes

Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

What you were sure of yesterday, you know now to be false, but what you are sure of today is absolutely true.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

I'm glad I don't have to explain to a man from Mars why each day I set fire to dozens of little pieces of paper, and then put them in my mouth.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Did that leave an undesirable taste in your mouth? Let’s take a swig.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

We hear only half of what is said to us, understand only half of that, believe only half of that, and remember only half of that.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Despair is anger with no place to go.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Money is the best counterfeit money.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you're delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody- and that's what's made them radiantly attractive.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Neurotic: Someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Luck: when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Between two married couples there are five possibilities for friendship: man to man, woman to woman, each man to the woman not his wife, and couple to couple. It's seldom that more than two of these will actually materialize.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

A doctor recently described to me "benign positional vertigo": it means you get dizzy in certain positions, but you can get over it without necessarily changing the position. Change "vertigo" to "anxiety," and you've summed up the neurotic's plight.

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mignon McLaughlin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.