The Neurotic's Notebook
If it came true, it wasn’t much of a dream.
Mistreat a businessman and he’ll try to make you sorry; mistreat an artist and he’ll try to make you immortal.
Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.
Women go to beauty parlors lor the unmussecl look men hate.
Women do not live longer than men; they only exist longer.
Many wives are forgiven for falling: few, for falling ill.
Make a habit of telling the truth, or make a habit of lying; to decide each case on its own merits is exhausting. and hardly ever worth it.
Insult, not flattery, is the great aphrodisiac.
There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.
No woman ever breaks off an affair simply because it’s unsuitable.
An artist usually has no friends except other artists, and usually they do not like his work.
Friendship without malice is unimaginable.
Most of us are impetuously generous just about as often as we are impetuously stingy.
It takes so little to start a cult: just a man who can’t stop talking.
We cough because we can’t help it, but others do it on purpose.
When a mixed marriage breaks up, two people have failed and two religions have been vindicated.
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).
If you have to do it every day, for God’s sake learn to do it well.
We have managed to drown out the silence; now to drown out the noise.
Young lovers and young nations face the same problem: After orgasm, what?
Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth; we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.
The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love.
The rich seldom have the most eloquent spokesmen. But that they have any spokesmen at all is pretty eloquent, really.
We listen only to those who flatter, amuse, or comfort us, and you know that’s not many people.
Pity all newlyweds. She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think: How easy marriage is.
Groups of girls are pretty, or not; they are seldom mixed.
We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.
On earth’s last morning, children will play, women will putter, men will compromise.
The poor have the same basic pleasures as the rich, and the rich will always resent it.
Each generation must watch the next throwing away its golden opportunities.
Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.
We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.
Everybody can write; writers can’t do anything else.
The neurotic circles ceaselessly above a fogged-in airport.
Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two thirds of what is in their closets.
From a wretched deed there is sometimes a good outcome, making penitence even more unlikely than usual.
When we have been humiliated by someone we love, it takes all our strength to pretend to recover from it.
What you cannot say to a friend’s face, say very carefully behind his back.
Interviews with actors always quote them as wanting to Find Out Who They Are. What nonsense! We know perfectly well who they are; the only worthwhile mystery is who we are.
Self-confidence grows on trees in other people’s orchards.
Men never know how tired they are till their wives sit them down for a nice long talk.
