Neil Strauss Quotes

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to defend principles in relationships. My goal is long-term happiness. And I make choices that aren’t going to undermine that goal.

The ignorant are not blissful; they are the butt of a joke they're not even aware of.

They say love is blind, but it’s trauma that’s blind. Love sees what is.

Men are not dogs. We merely think we are and, on occasion, act as if we are. But, by believing in our nobler nature, women have the amazing power to inspire us to live up to it.

If you possess the ability to learn from your mistakes, then failure is literally impossible, because each rejection brings you closer to perfection.

Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.

Most guys who define themselves as "too nice" only behave nicely because they want everybody to like them and don’t want anyone to think badly of them. Don’t mistake being fearful and weak-minded for being nice.

The great thing about the heart is that it has no master, despite what reason may think.

Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.

In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.

The natural instincts of men seem to be to alternate between periods of love relationships and periods of hedonistic bachelorhood, with some traumatized kids thrown in as an evolutionary imperative.

Nature knows no tragedies or catastrophes. It knows no good or evil. It knows only creation and destruction. and one can never truly be happy and free, in the way we were as children before learning of our mortality, without at some point confronting our destruction. And all we can ask for, all we can hope for, all we can beseech God for, is to win a few battles in a war we will ultimately lose.

A life is just one letter away from a lie.

The success of a relationship should be measured by its depth, not by its length.

A man has two primary drives in early adulthood: one toward power, success, and accomplishment; the other toward love, companionship, and sex. Half of life then was out of order. To go before them was to stand up as a man and admit that I was only half a man.