Mignon McLaughlin on Friendship

"No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves."

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

"We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead."

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

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

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

"Nobody really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why."

"The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it."

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

"If the second marriage really succeeds, the first one didn't really fail."

"Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend."

"Anything you lose automatically doubles in value."

"Between two married couples there are five possibilities for friendship: man to man, woman to woman, each man to the woman not his wife, and couple to couple. It's seldom that more than two of these will actually materialize."