Mignon McLaughlin
The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.Collection: Rooms
When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else you meant to say.Collection: Money
Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.Collection: Done
A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.Collection: Marriage
If it came true, it wasn't much of a dream.Collection: Dream
So long as God reveals Himself, or doesn't, He is behaving like God.Collection: God
Suburb: a place that isn't city, isn't country, and isn't tolerable.Collection: Country
Women are never landlocked: they're always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.Collection: Tears
The neurotic always wishes people would let him alone - until they do.Collection: People
Men feel that women somehow drag them down, and women feel that way about men. It's possible that both are right.Collection: Funny Relationship
Nobody knows the trouble we've seen-but we keep trying to tell them.Collection: Trying
Others follow patterns; we alone are unpredictable.Collection: Patterns
Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.Collection: Funny
The neurotic is always half-drowning in anxiety, and always being half-rescued.Collection: Anxiety
The neurotic would like to trust his analyst - if only because he's paying him so much money. But he can't - because if the analyst really cared, he'd be doing it for nothing.Collection: Analysts
Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.Collection: Rewards
Neurotic: someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.Collection: Touching
Creative work is one of life's greatest pleasures, and the only one we will gladly interrupt.Collection: Creativity
The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.Collection: Eye
What's for dinner is the only question many husbands ask their wives, and the only one to which they care about the answer.Collection: Marriage
The two main hazards of psychoanalysis: that it might fail, and that if it succeeds, you'll never be able to forgive yourself for all those wasted years.Collection: Years
Beauty often fades, but seldom so swiftly as the joy it gives us.Collection: Beauty
Not for nothing does the neurotic suffer - but not for anything very much, either.Collection: Suffering
To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting. And even then it's not easy.Collection: Believe
People keep telling us about their love affairs, when what we really want to know is how much money they make and how they manage on it.Collection: People
Neurotic quarrels always have the same theme-song: Hate me and get it over with.Collection: Song
Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there's no such thing as exactly enough.Collection: Money
God doesn't measure His bounty, but oh how we do!Collection: Mankind
To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life-work.Collection: Cigarette Smoke
If I knew why I worried so much, I wouldn't worry.Collection: Worry
Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.Collection: Men
The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won't have that to worry about anymore.Collection: Worry
Courage doesn't know what's around the corner, but goes around it anyway.Collection: Corners
It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.Collection: Doe
I know which side my bread is buttered on: the side which falls on the carpet.Collection: Fall
Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.Collection: Happiness
Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.Collection: Thinking
When first we fall in love, we feel that we know all there is to know about life, and perhaps we are right.Collection: Falling In Love
Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat.Collection: Strong
We cough because we can't help it, but others do it on purpose.Collection: Purpose
No one ever loved anyone the way that person wanted to be loved.Collection: Confused
There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.Collection: Iron
When hope is hungry, everything feeds itCollection: Hungry
A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.Collection: Women
Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.Collection: Soul
Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don't.Collection: Remember
Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. But they're sometimes so bad they can't get better.Collection: Get Better
Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either.Collection: Play
If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.Collection: Family