Quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.

There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write.

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

Most of us would rather risk a catastrophe than read the instructions.

If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.

Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name

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

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

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

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.

The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.

You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won't take it.

Mama does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Dada first.

With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.

Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.

Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors.

It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.

We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.

It's easy enough to get along with a loved and loving child—at least till you try to get him to do something.

The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.

Pessimism is like optimism, only less dangerous.

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.

Para un buen matrimonio hay que enamorarse muchas veces, siempre de la misma persona.