The Neurotic's Notebook

MIGNON McLAUGHLIN

Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.

Home is a place you can leave whenever you like, but they can’t put you out.

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

Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort, but I do not think they will find God.

The gambling fever, once it has passed, is as impossible to remember as pain.

Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it’s made you a mess, but you won’t die from it.

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

The neurotic’s strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.

There are children born to be children, and others who must merely mark time till they can take their natural places as adults.

Women’s minds are like their purses, full stocked, mostly with junk.

We are always surprised to see girl babies behaving like girls from the very start, and boys like boys; we seem to imagine that we had to learn it.

Doodles courtesy of Charles W. Morton.