211 Quotes by Neil Strauss

The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.

Whenever people idealize their caretakers, chances are pretty good that the opposite is true. Sometimes illusion is created by the parents, who insists in godlike fashion that they’re perfect and that the child owes them obedience because they’re responsible for his or her existence. Other times the illusion is created by the child as a survival strategy, disconnecting from reality in order to avoid the pain of growing up in a toxic enviroment.

In recent weeks, I’d figured out my own routine. It was a simple structure that allowed me to determine the direction in which I needed to take a girl: First, open. Then demonstrate higher value. Next, build rapport and an emotional connection. And, finally, create a physical connection.

What’s helped with saying no to others is asking myself first if I’m saying yes out of guilt or fear. If so, then it’s a polite no.

I wish she were receptive enough to discuss what I learned, but you can’t expect the same person who wounded you to heal you. So.

A lot of times, people in a family think it’s just one person who causes all the trouble,” Lorraine, the therapist who lectured us on trauma, is telling the assembly. “But a family is a system, and a sick person is the product of a sick system.

We’re just fragile machines programmed with a false sense of our own importance. And every now and then the universe sends a reminder that we don’t really matter to it...

In life, we are born innocent and pure, beautiful and honest, and in a state of oneness with each moment. As we develop, however, our caregivers and others load us with baggage. Some of us keep accumulating more and more baggage until we become burdened by all the weight, trapped in beliefs and behaviors that keep us stuck. But the true purpose of life is to divest yourself of that baggage and become light and pure again. You’ve been searching for freedom this whole time. That is true freedom.

In the dance of infatuation, we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts.