211 Quotes by Neil Strauss

It’s tragic. The wounds that humans get are so strong that they’re like robots operating on childhood programming. And even if they learn the truth about themselves in therapy and rehab, they still cling to their false beliefs and make choices that don’t serve them – over and over again.” He shakes his head at the cosmic absurdity of it all. “It takes hard, conscious, diligent work to genuinely change.

As I walked back to my room, a scene from The Wizard of Oz sprung into my head in which the Wizard tells the Tin Man, “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” I.

All the things you’ve been trying to get from these relationships – freedom, understanding, fairness, acceptance – are exactly the things that you never got from your mom.

I had violated one of Ross Jeffries’s only ethical rule of seduction: Leave her better than you found her.

He asked her what she was famous for – “everybody’s famous for something.

She’s still making me go over every detail of the affair. And, you know, whenever I check my email, everything’s in the read folder because she’s already gone through it all.” “That’s a horrible way to live – for you and for her. You know what Lorraine calls it?” “No.” “Pain shopping. She’s not getting healed by that. She’s just getting retraumatized.

The secret to life is not to take it personally. The things people do and say are not always.

For most men, what’s tougher than breaking up is the moment when their ex finally falls out of love with them and lets go, perhaps because it triggers a childhood fear – a psychological terror – of losing the first woman whose love they needed: their mother. And so, as Sheila would recommend, I let myself feel the pain, the loneliness, and the fear, using all my strength as the days pass to keep from giving in and reaching out to Ingrid.

Relationships are like divining rods for locating one’s faults and weaknesses.