People From New York State

"He's in for trouble—the man whose wife is detested by all women and desired by all men."

"With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins."

"Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets."

"Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere."

"Bored with your present enemies? Make new ones! Tell two of your women friends that they look alike."

"Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls."

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

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

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

"Good-looking girls break hearts, and good-hearted girls mend them."

"All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men."

"Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives."

"There’s nothing wrong with most men’s egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can’t cure."

"It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily."

"Most women would like to dress imaginatively, but they glare at any woman who does."

"Many beautiful women have been made happy by their own beauty, but no intelligent woman has ever been made happy by her own intelligence."

"Women are good listeners, but it’s a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there’s something specific you want him to do."

"An attractive woman likes feminine company until she's twenty, and after she's twenty-five."

"Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears."

"Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing, too."

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

"Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on."

"Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry."

"In the theatre, as in life, we prefer a villain with a sense of humor to a hero without one."

"Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either."

"Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play."

"Broadway audiences are dependably square. "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch" always gets a laugh; spoken by a little old lady, it brings down the house."

"Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don't."

"Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn't exist."

"The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves."

"The neurotic believes that life has meaning, but that his life hasn't."

"The mark of the neurotic: to imagine that you're the only one who cares deeply for anything."

"Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone."

"Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice."

"Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo."

"The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated."

"Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are."

"A doctor recently described to me "benign positional vertigo": it means you get dizzy in certain positions, but you can get over it without necessarily changing the position. Change "vertigo" to "anxiety," and you've summed up the neurotic's plight."

"Neurotics make poor patriots; if you're ashamed of something as big as yourself, it's hard to be proud of something as small as your country."

"The neurotic always wishes people would let him alone - until they do."

"The neurotic keeps minute track of his enemies; it is only his friends he is careless about."

"The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he's locked in; bars on your door mean that he's locked out."

"Neurotics are sure that no one understands them, and they wouldn't have it any other way."

"Neurotic: Someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle."

"Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them."

"The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself."

"Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways."

"Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note."

"The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match."

"Naturally, the neurotic wants you to love him twice as much, for he's going to cut it in half anyway."