Mignon McLaughlin

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

Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.

Cash is the one gift everyone despises and no one turns down.

You cant truthfully explain your smallest action without fully revealing your character.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't.

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

True remorse is never just a regret over consequence it is a regret over motive.

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

There are a handful of people whom money wont spoil and we count ourselves among them.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

Grasp your opportunities no matter how poor your health nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer.

Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.

If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious.

We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.

The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.

Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.

There's no way to repay a mother's love, or lack of it.

Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.

Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.

Even cowards can endure hardship only the brave can endure suspense.

Learning too soon our limitations we never learn our powers.

Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.

Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.

A successful relationship requires falling in love multiple times but always with the same person.

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.

We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty

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.

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.

My doctor is nice every time I see him Im ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

Its terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. Its particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.

Despair is anger with no place to go.

There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.

No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.

Its wonderful to watch a pretty woman with character grow beautiful.

The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.

We would all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap.

Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.

We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.

When hope is hungry everything feeds it.

No one ever loved anyone the way that person wanted to be loved.

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.

As we grow older our capacity for enjoyment shrinks but not our appetite for it.

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.

Theres an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

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.

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.

Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.

Men really prefer reasonably attractive women they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.

Boredom is often the cause of promiscuity, and always its result.

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way and to be able to blame it on alcohol.

Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.

Every day of our lives, we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.

The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it we are better judges of convenience than we are of love.

Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.

Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.

Revenge leads to an empty fullness like eating dirt.

Self-confidence grows on trees, in other people's orchards.

If you are brave too often, people will come to expect it of you.

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.

To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life work.

Others follow patterns; we alone are unpredictable.

It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.

If you made a list of 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.

What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly.

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.

Courage can't see around corners but goes around them anyway.

Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

Always live up to your standards—by lowering them, if necessary.

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

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times always with the same person.

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.

Forget about calories everything makes thin people thinner and fat people fatter.

We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.

Our strength is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we're going to show.