Mignon McLaughlin
Mignon McLaughlin
Mignon McLaughlinwas an American journalist and author. In the 1950s, she began publishing aphorisms that were later collected in three books, entitled, The Neurotic’s Notebook, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook and The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook. She is known for a number of quotes, among them:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth6 June 1913
CountryUnited States of America
lonely anger envy
Spite is never lonely; envy always tags along.
marriage partnership businessman
Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.
affair love-affair neurotic
At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic.
emotional pay bills
The neurotic doesn't know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all.
rewards settling broke
Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.
touching middle back-again
Neurotic: someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.
class choices citizens
Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.
anxiety half drowning
The neurotic is always half-drowning in anxiety, and always being half-rescued.
people way odd
Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.
mean doctors anxiety
A doctor recently described to me "benign positional vertigo": it means you get dizzy in certain positions, but you can get over it without necessarily changing the position. Change "vertigo" to "anxiety," and you've summed up the neurotic's plight.
real fantasy neurotic
The neurotic's strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.
eye perfect vision
The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.
cutting want half
Naturally, the neurotic wants you to love him twice as much, for he's going to cut it in half anyway.
something-new neurotic
Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo.