Neil Strauss

“I've noticed a pattern in stars that start acting out in public. Every one of them felt like they grew up without love.”

“The good thing is that women have such high expectations of men that it inspires us to live up to them. That's what I learned about male-female relationships.”

“True endurance, I think, comes from the inside. It comes from motivation and belief in what you're doing.”

“…each woman is a wonderful world unto herself. And monogamy? It’s like choosing to live in a single town and never traveling to experience the beauty, history, and enchantment of all the other unique, wonderful places in the world. Why does love have to limit us? Perhaps it doesn’t. Only fear is restrictive. Love is expansive. And I wonder, since fear of enmeshment impels us to avoid commitment and fear of abandonment makes us possessive, what type of evolved relationship can emerge once those wounds are healed?”

“Because it's so easy to medicate our need for self-worth by pandering to win followers, 'likes' and view counts, social media have become the metier of choice for many people who might otherwise channel that energy into books, music or art - or even into their own Web ventures.”

“STRAUSS:Have you ever thought about putting those experiences into a book?RICHIE:I did decide to write about what i experienced in climbing to the top. And finally when I got there, I discovered what was at the top.You know what was there?STRAUSS: No, I don't.RICHIE: Nothing. Not one thing. What was at the top was all the experiences that you had to get there.”

“To me, I think it's awesome to meet your heroes and find out who they are and where they came from and what made them choose to communicate in the form that connected with you.”

“I've begun to look at the world through apocalypse eyes. Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of.”

“Men are a hundred times worse than you can imagine. We are thinking the worst, shallowest thoughts, all the time.”

“Fame won't make you feel any better about yourself.”

“Never ask a woman if you may kiss her. Instead, learn to read body language.”

“Love is when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one things and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self.”

“A good organizer is key to anyone with a busy social life.”

“When the Internet first came into public use, it was hailed as a liberation from conformity, a floating world ruled by passion, creativity, innovation and freedom of information. When it was hijacked first by advertising and then by commerce, it seemed like it had been fully co-opted and brought into line with human greed and ambition.”

“The women you've slept with, the ones you never did but primed for a future encounter, the ones who seemed interested but then suddenly stopped texting: Unless you do something horribly wrong, they never completely disappear. A lonely night, a cheating boyfriend, a sudden breakup, an attack of low self-esteem, an attack of high self-esteem—anything can, out of the blue, send them scrolling through their address book looking for validation, for security, for conversation, for adoration, for the fantasy of you filling some empty space in her life.”

“Anyone who hates something feels threatened by it. A guy who says he hates feminism (a) doesn't understand or know feminism, and (b) is scared of powerful women. Most attacks come from fear.”

“Dating is for tools.”

“In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.”

“I feel like rock stars feel a sense of entitlement, whereas I just feel a sense of good fortune.”

“I always wanted to interview Michael Jackson, because I just wanted to humanize him.”