Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

It is always safe to tell people that they’re looking wonderful.

When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.

Groups of girls are pretty, or not; they are seldom mixed.

The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.

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.

We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.

Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions.

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.

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.

Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its outer circle, and its hangers-on.

All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.

Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat.

If it came true, it wasn’t much of a dream.