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Category Archives: Mignon McLaughlin

Another (somewhat) Valentine’s Day-themed blog post that may not put butterflies in your stomach or stars in your eyes, but at least it can put a thought in your head.

Quotable quotes from The Neurotic’s Notebook (1960) by Mignon McLaughlin:

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Any woman can talk herself into being in love with any man, for a while anyway.

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

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

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

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Everybody can write; writers can’t do anything else.

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I am as I am is another way of saying “I can do without your love.”

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Insult, not flattery, is the great aphrodisiac.

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Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.

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My thoughts, I guess, are bitter; who but the bitter have thoughts?

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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.

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The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing.

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

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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.

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We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.

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When we have been humiliated by someone we love, it takes all our strength to pretend to recover from it.

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

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