The Neurotic's Notebook
We don’t mind our children having different virtues from ours, but it seems disloyal of them to have different faults.
Our strength is often composed of the weakness we’re damned if we’re going to show.
Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.
Live and let live: now there’s a pair of impossible commands.
The neurotic’s constant prayer: that nothing worse will happen.
Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren’t even good for you.
The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he’s locked in, bars on your door mean that he’s locked out.
Most sermons sound to me like commercials — but I can’t make out whether God is the sponsor or the product.
Women let you know how awful they’re really feeling, and how bravely they’re concealing it.
Of the few happy marriages a neurotic sees around him, most seem to him unsuitable.
Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them.
Suburb: a place that isn’t city, isn’t country, and isn’t tolerable.
To talk easily with people, you must firmly believe that either you or they are interesting — and even then it isn’t easy.
Your children remember every unkind thing you ever did to them, plus a few you really didn’t.
The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.
There’s nothing man has done that man cannot do better.
If a man likes his wife’s best friend at all, he likes her too much.
Talent is one muscle no one has ever overexercised.
Trust is to love as icing is to cake: not strictly necessary, but it sure sweetens the taste.
There’s only one person who needs a glass of water more often than a small child tucked in for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.
Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.
We’re charmed by coincidence, except when it inconveniences us.
I know a young man who doesn’t believe in God, but does believe in the devil. It’s my hunch that this is acceptable to God.
Each day, the American housewife turns toward television as toward a lover. She feels guilty about it, and well she might — for he’s covered with warts and is only after her money.
The young can seldom be faithless for long to the same person.
Today’s music always sounds cheesy to those who remember yesterday’s.
Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health: nothing is worse for your health than boredom.
I half believe in reincarnation, and I’d like to come back as an otter: so far as I know, it’s impossible to be a bad otter.
There are people who hide their love from you, and people who hide their hate, and you’ll be wise to stay away from both.
If you’ve got the talent, you’ve got the energy.
It’s easier to part with a friend than with an opinion.
Without sex, alcohol, sleeping pills, you are always with yourself.
A man will desert the wife he loves much oftener than the type he loves.
When real pleasures fade, there’s always the stock market.
Nothing so blights a party as a hostess with plans for making it jolly.
Anxiety is like clinging to half a rope, halfway down a well.
There are some people we just plain don’t like the looks of, and they all nestle close to us at the beach.
Nowhere but in the arts can talent, experience, dedication, and years of hard work lead to a steady decline in quality.
Most of us can easily do two things at once; what’s all but impossible is to do one thing at once.
Women who feel naked without their lipstick are well over thirty.
The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.
