Quotes from Neil Strauss

the past, I used to fall for ultimatums. But I'd since learned that ultimatums are expressions of powerlessness, empty threats designed to try to influence a situation someone has no control over.

They had the magic pill, the solution to the inertia and frustration that has plagued the great literary protagonists I'd related to all my life—be it Leopold Bloom, Alex Portnoy, or Piglet from Winnie the Pooh. As

And this requires only good grooming, and clothing that conveys an attractive identity.

Project Hollywood was bringing me out of my solipsistic shell. It was giving me the resources I needed to be a leader; it was teaching me how to walk the tightrope of group dynamics; it was helping me learn to let go of petty things like personal property, solitude, cleanliness, sanity, and sleep.

When a phalanx of paparazzi started taking pictures of Dennis Rodman, who was standing nearby, I looked at Lisa's face, illuminated by the flashbulbs. And out of nowhere, my heart awoke from its torpor and body-checked my chest. When

There's an unconscious part of ourselves we want to defend," she continues, "and it's been useful and helped us survive the difficult stuff we went through with Mom or Dad or the priest or the coach. But we don't want it driving the car anymore." She looks at me and Troy and Adam and Calvin, then concludes: "Life's not worth living if you're living someone else's life.

At most, he was introducing me to a body of knowledge I could draw from, like the writings of Joseph Campbell or the teaching of the Buddha or the lyrics of Jay-Z. After

love is not about finding the right person. It's about becoming the right person.

I realized the mistake I'd been making my whole life: to get a woman, you have to be willing to risk losing her. What if she reacts me? Yeah, and what if a meteor hits your house.

Elämä oli hänen ja Jumalan välinen sisäpiirivitsi.

Relationships are like divining rods for locating one's faults and weaknesses.

And because no one ever understands a word I say—my voice is too fast, quiet, and mumbly—I started taking weekly private lessons in speech and singing.

Since I was 18, I've been under orders from magazines and newspapers - chiefly The New York Times and Rolling Stone - to step into the lives of musicians, actors, and artists, and somehow find out who they really are underneath the mask they present to the public. But I didn't always succeed.

The good thing is that women have such high expectations of men that it inspires us to live up to them. That's what I learned about male-female relationships.

A lot of women - not all of them, a lot of them - feel insecure about men being men.

When it comes to meeting and attracting women, many men are resigned and complacent. We figure some guys were born with that particular power and other guys weren't. I wasn't.

The cost of failure is…learning.

Ignorance is thinking you're not a student anymore.

There can be people who are feminist, and people who hold the completely opposite view but are still feminists. It seems to me from the outside that there's a lot of people busy fighting each other rather than working toward their goals. It's a shame.

I want to learn martial arts," he said docilely, "so when I want to kill someone, I can do something about it.

It's not enough to just be yourself. You must be your best self

When I was in college, my whole goal was to write for the 'Village Voice,' and I think I was doing that by the time I was twenty-one or twenty, so everything else has kind of been gravy, you know?

Fear makes you docile.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in the past was that I believed love was about finding the right person. In reality, love is about becoming the right person. Don't look for the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Become the person you want to spend your life with.