The Neurotic's Notebook

How it rejoices a middle-aged woman when her husband criticizes a pretty girl!

There is nothing that everybody would like to do, except maybe sing.

We are all lovable. At least in our own eyes. At least if you catch us at the right moment.

It is my theory that Murray Kempton and William Buckley are the alternate signatures of the same infuriating man.

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

Neurotics marry and tell themselves that things will change. It’s like writing poetry on a typewriter: possible, but just barely.

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

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. So are good manners.

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

Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.

there are people who get everything done, and people who get nothing done, and hardly anyone in between.

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else’s.

Women are afraid of mice and murder and of very little in between.

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

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

Acedia is not in every dictionary — only in every heart.

Resuming a long-interrupted friendship makes you feel any age but your own.

What to do with a windfall: spend a little, save a little, gamble a little, pay some bills with what’s left.

When humorless people laugh loudest and longest, it’s a signal to the rest of us that they’ve had enough of our wit.

To write the best possible play, start off with the best possible exposition scene; then go on and finish the play; then go back and lop off the exposition scene.

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

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