Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

I've been accused of riding roughshod over others' emotions, and I admit, when I feel a friend is being over-indulgent, my patience is in short supply.

My tolerance for tears is very little when you're beautiful and crying over nothing.

They very seldom let me lose my cool. They made me like I was Polly Perfect, which was ridiculous so that when I bump into kids on the street they'd say 'I wish my Mom were like you.'

We used to say that he who threw the biggest tantrum won the day.

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

People love drama. They feed off of it.

Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.

I believe I've spent my life expecting people to behave in a certain way. I believe that when they didn't behave according to my expectations, I became angry, sad, confused and occasionally fearful. I believe these expectations are the reason I've been angry, sad, confused and occasionally fearful more than I care to admit. As a result, I now believe my expectations are the real problem. I believe that everyone has this very same problem, and they ought to start acting accordingly.

We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless.

These feelings you engender in me, my lord, are most indelicate. You should stop causing them immediately.

Feelings follow actions. If I'm feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I'm feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.

A maid that laughs is half taken.

In almost any situation, it is far more devastating to keep your icy cool while the other person gets herself in a flush-cheeked, teary-eyed hot mess yelling in your face.

Mrs. Lammle's manner changed under the poor silly girl's embraces, and she turned extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs. Boffin, and then to Mr. Boffin. Both understood her instantly, with a more delicate subtlety than much better educated people, whose perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear upon the case.

Dramatic exits are the last refuge of the infantile personality

I still partially suffer from the delusion that if you explain things logically and systematically, most people will abandon their emotional prejudices and respond to logic. But I don't suffer from that delusion as wholeheartedly as I did in the past. So if there's a fundamental difference, it's that I've accepted the fact that most imbeciles will never 'get' me and I shouldn't allow myself to get so upset about it.

People only love you as long as they're getting something of you, but the minute you say something they don't want to hear or do something they don't want to see, all the admiration drains from their hearts.

It’s a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music.

The people can be forced to fear, but not to love.

Anger simply means that your personal power - your personal space, your personal sense of being - has been violated

I usually don't think of anyone ever suspecting that I might be someone who'd cry at stuff. I cry at movies all the time. And sometimes it really pisses me off because I hate it when they're just jerking my chain and it's just like completely manipulative.

If we turn to the war in Kosovo, what do we find? We find the manipulation of the audience's emotions by the mass media.

Love, love, love - all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures.

One of the findings that really interests me is that, although we think we ACT because of the way we FEEL, we often FEEL because of the way we ACT. So an almost uncanny way to change your feelings is to act the way you WISH you felt.

Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.