Mignon McLaughlin

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

Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.

It__ easy enough to get along with a loved and loving child__t least till you try to get him to do something.

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

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.

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times -- always with the same person.

Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

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

If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.

We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

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.

Even cowards can endure hardship only the brave can endure suspense.

Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.