Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

There is always some specific moment when we realize our youth is gone; but years after, we know it was much later.

Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.

Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.

We're all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

Women who feel naked without their lipstick are well over thirty.

Comfort, or revelation: God owes us one of these, but surely not both.

If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.

We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy: whiskey and action are easier.

We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"?

Men feel that women somehow drag them down, and women feel that way about men. It's possible that both are right.

There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.

In youth we are plagued by desire; in later years, by the desire to feel desire.

Many of us are equal to life's emergencies who cannot bear its day-after-dayness.

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

God and the devil lose to a common enemy: inertia.

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

I wish I'd said it first, and I don't even know who did: The only problems that money can solve are money problems.

Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.

It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not.

A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer.

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone but, years after, we know it was much later.

A woman ought to look up to her husband, if only a half-inch.

If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.