The Neurotic's Notebook
The greatest works of art and the vilest murders are motivated alike: to do one thing once that only you in all the world can do.
Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note.
A generous woman, a man with empathy, a cabdriver who keeps his mouth shut: these almost do not exist.
The neurotic desperately galvanizes his energy and produces an aftercast in other words, “a throw of dice after the game is ended; hence, anything done too late.”
The time to begin most things is ten years ago.
Every man is unique whose wife makes him feel so.
We semaphore from ship to ship, but they’re sinking too.
Your best work always seems to have been done by someone else.
Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom all apply; lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity.
Two who are tidy can make a go of marriage, or two who are sloppy — but never one of each.
When you’re with people you have nothing to say to, you’re liable to say almost anything.
Love, at best, is joy; work, though, can be ecstasy.
Families who hate each other seem almost glued together; a happy home is such a free place there is seldom anyone in it.
Men who don’t like girls with brains don’t like girls.
Neurotics would rather lose than not gamble at all.
Nobody has a happy childhood, said a young man who was the happiest child I ever knew.
Before you go, hope they remember you; before you return, hope they’ve forgotten.
Let someone look at us sideways, and we are sure we have been found out.
When a chef, a chemist, or a tree surgeon talks about his work, we can all listen and learn; let an artist do it, though, and it just sounds pretentious.
Women talk and talk, but men hear only the self-incriminating things.
A woman alone in Venice is like a man two years out of work.
Men gossip less than women but mean it.
Strong cruel women generally marry weak cruel men.
Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep; to these basic animal pleasures man has added nothing but the good cigarette.
If you can’t gracefully resolve a quarrel, don’t get married.
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
Most marriages would be happier if the husband could have a pleasant little side affair, provided the wife never knew about it.
For neurotics, success is a five-minute wonder; failure, a five-year plan.
Luck: when your burst of energy doesn’t run afoul of someone else’s.
By the time women are kind to each other, they’re no longer rivals. Or is it the other way around?
The next voice you hear will undoubtedly be your own.
