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153b3ac "Mad Hatter: "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" "Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. "No, I give it up," Alice replied: "What's the answer?" "I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter" madness insanity Lewis Carroll
94b3fca The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. crisis insanity crazy Hunter S. Thompson
c85f23a Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound- does not spring from disease of thought- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. sanity intelligence insanity Edgar Allan Poe
30aff97 If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them. sanity insanity Christopher Moore
537ced5 Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be. misunderstandings insanity sisters Toni Morrison
60108db Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane? insanity Terry Pratchett
0837276 Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane? war religion insanity Terry Pratchett
71ad0e3 Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is... Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends. madness friendship insanity Susanna Kaysen
4687742 We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville. humor insanity harry-dresden Jim Butcher
509c612 Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream. sanity dreams insanity Edgar Allan Poe
254eaee and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. lemons ford insanity Douglas Adams
b3968be Innocence is a kind of insanity innocent insanity Graham Greene
39595b2 Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected? insanity Louis de Bernières
865de3d I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. sanity fear voices insanity Margaret Atwood
64dd414 To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can't sit still, move, or even go decently insane. pain insanity Charles Bukowski
23dad8f "I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale." George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences. To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . . PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . . So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation. They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and , and kiss my ass! There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president." psychopathic-personalities government reality-tv insanity Kurt Vonnegut
5cc97f0 I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing? realisation genius radical insanity Alan Moore
cadf404 If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier. intellectual insanity self-help Paulo Coelho
afbd539 Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane. judgement superstition insanity Bram Stoker
e0f61c1 All writers are insane! insanity writers Cornelia Funke
a0f7532 You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas. insanity Stephen King
09a8f6c Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum. louisiana insanity James Lee Burke
f2986d3 Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. poets logic-reason insanity G.K. Chesterton
4b53216 I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning. words silence fear sound insanity Samuel Beckett
72a6ec1 God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again. sleep murder humanity darkness god god-s-creation hannibal never-ending psychopath the-silence-of-the-lambs doomed cycle doom serial-killer serial-killers crying punishment prison insanity horror mental-illness hell Thomas Harris
ac756ea I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact. nut-house sane insanity William S. Burroughs
17e9cb8 Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side! sanity humor life insanity Terry Pratchett
9b65ac5 "You need to be clever to best him. Are you clever, Rachel?" I glanced at Al, and he stared at me, then shrugged. Licking my lips, I said, "It's the shiny pot that puts a hole in the sky." Al's mouth dropped open, but Newt thought about it, her expression thoughtful and her fingers finally leaving her knife. "Very true," she said as she eased back into the cushions. With a soft click of his teeth, Al's mouth shut. His eyes were cross, and he seemed peeved that I'd found a way to satisfy her without compromising myself at all." clever al newt demons insanity Kim Harrison
8f526c3 "You're insane!" "I won't argue that point." insanity Ray Bradbury
3dce11c All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someone else's nose to prove they had been somewhere or done something. And I thought someday everyone in America will suddenly jump up and say, 'I don't take any shit!' and start pushing and cursing and clawing at the man next to him. revolution insanity William S. Burroughs
2253234 The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I'm not sure about the turnip. turnip insanity Terry Pratchett
4bb34b0 Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, the security screens, the plastic forks, the shimmering, ever-shifting borderline that like all boundaries beckons and asks to be crossed. I do not want to cross it again. girl-interrupted insanity mental-illness Susanna Kaysen
a119c14 "Love is a fake!" Olson was blaring. "There are three great truths in the world and they are a good meal, a good screw, and a good shit, and that's all!" reality insanity Richard Bachman
cba29b9 I was perfectly calm and perfectly insane, perfectly prepared to accept what the moment had offered. Indifference of that magnitude is rare and because it can be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who he is, it demands respect. It inspires awe in those who gaze upon it. nothing-to-lose insanity fearlessness Paul Auster
a7443c4 "This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here." social insanity Terry Pratchett
74efa88 One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness madness sanity nuts tribe insanity Anne Lamott
1352c58 "We're all dreaming," Arctor said. If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected. He wondered how much of the garbage that Donna had overheard he had seriously meant. He wondered how much of the insanity of the day--his insanity--had been real, or just induced as a contact lunacy, by the situation. Donna, always, was a pivot point of reality for him; for her this was the basic, natural question. He wished he could answer." reality dreams dreaming insanity drugs Philip K. Dick
f118c57 Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane - not just insane but totally so - or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane. sanity psychiatrist insanity mental-health Philip K. Dick
5c4e717 I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not. sanity short-story insanity Edgar Allan Poe
a9994f1 Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity. religion insanity fanaticism Robert Graves
d408f86 Manie sans delire - insanity without delusion. insanity Holly Black
b468977 April 43rd 2000 Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today. Frankly, it all came to me in a flash. madness insanity sad Nikolai Gogol
2b50ed9 "And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane people are "happy," O God, in fact it was Irwin Garden once warned me not to think the madhouses are full of "happy nuts." (p. 200)" unhappiness paranoia insanity Jack Kerouac
19e9c7d "Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do." The sign read: "Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion." "It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane." -- hermit social-anxiety satire society genius insanity Douglas Adams
60010d4 When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. insanity Arthur Koestler
20c1bd4 She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer. innocence insanity Vladimir Nabokov
5574334 "The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic." sanity individual pathology originality individualism society insanity Erich Fromm
1424e74 "Am I cured?" "No. You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness." "Is wanting to be different a serious illness?" "It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's insane to be different, and that's why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?" Mari nodded. "People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known." insanity mental-illness Paulo Coelho
a9fd798 Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away. tragedy parents insanity Anne Lamott
f18aae5 We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? good national-troubles social-problems insanity G. K. Chesterton
2f8f48e Sometimes I notice I'm demented, especially at sunset. insanity Jaroslav Hašek
06a0fac May you tear each other to bits, you damned hyenas, and the quicker the better. Let it be destroyed. Let it happen. Let it end, this cold insanity. hyenas tear end destruction insanity Jean Rhys
3b99d9e I watched the black ocean in his eyes and saw this flash behind them and understood what he had meant the night before, about the insanity that had gripped him. He was not so far gone as to be lost, but he was close, and I knew it had come from me turning my back on him as I had started to flee. Whether I wanted to or not, I anchored him to this world, and I was the only thing he'd known, maybe for his whole life. He had watched me, yes, he had stalked me, oh yes, but it had driven him to the edge. I inhaled sharply at the wildness I saw in him, the despair that was threatening to rise. insanity T.J. Klune
e709e93 As long as she could remember who she was, she was okay. She wouldn't go crazy. At least not today. sanity the-van-alen-legacy insanity Melissa de la Cruz
2c9ce06 I am the scourge of God insanity obsession Peter Ackroyd
a6d6ed5 It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment. sanity self-awareness insanity William Faulkner
ae7a56c Now, I would say to myself, you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people, therefore you are projecting your discomfort onto them. When you look at a face, you see a blob of rubber because you are worried that your face is a blob of rubber. This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled. madness insanity Susanna Kaysen
3f675c0 But, he thought, what does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? He thought, It is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. No, he thought. That isn't it. I don't know; I sense it, I intuit it. But -- they are purposelessly cruel... is that it? No, God, he thought. I can't find it, make it clear. Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans. The conquering of the planets. Something frenzied and demented, as was their conquering of Africa, and before that, Europe and Asia. Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction : race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, hounor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Gute, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. facism nazis insanity Philip K. Dick
9fa5020 If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else--mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful. good death efficiency journalism manners insanity evil G.K. Chesterton
083faff Insanity? The mental processes of a man with whom one disagrees, are always wrong. Where is the line between wrong mind and sane mind? It is inconceivable that any sane man can radically disagree with one's most sane conclusions. thought-control insanity mental-illness Jack London
252559d "One of them hasn't got a uniform on or plainclothes either like the rest. He has on the white coat that is my nightmare and my horror. And in the crotch of one arm he is upending two long poles intertwined with canvas. The long-drawn-out death within life. The burial-alive of the mind, covering it over with fresh graveyard earth each time it tries to struggle through to the light. In this kind of death you never finish dying. ("New York Blues")" insanity mental-illness Cornell Woolrich
600a3d7 We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane. religion insanity Frank Herbert
fd03084 We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silvered Creatures upon the Moon: Their Stories seem to have neither Head nor Tayl to them, Sir Chris. told me, but there is a Grammar in them if I could but Puzzle it out. This is a mad Age, I replied, and there are many fitter for Bedlam than these here confin'd to a Chain or a dark Room. A sad Reflection, Nick. And what little Purpose have we to glory in our Reason, I continu'd, when the Brain may so suddenly be disorder'd? reason bedlam insanity Peter Ackroyd
836f812 His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life. madness fear insanity terror Peter Ackroyd
e32bbc4 And what if you could go back in time and take all those hours of sorrow and insanity and replace them with something better? time sorrow insanity Rebecca McNutt
760c7cc You can only drive yourself crazy if you have no distance from the world going-crazy truths the-world insanity Suki Kim
92793dd Barbee had always wondered about mental institutions. He thought of taking notes for a feature story on this adventure at Glennhaven, as the evening wore on, began to seem remarkable for utter lack of anything noteworthy. It began to appear as a fragile never-never land, populated with timid souls in continual retreat from the real world outside and even from one another within. insanity Jack Williamson
0eaec6c There was nothing Mandy had wanted more than to give her full attention to the world of Personifications and ignore those who ignored her in society. She'd wanted to talk out loud to Alecto, to have conversations in front of other ordinary people. Unfortunately, to do that in front of ordinary people would only prove her insanity, and although Mandy was naive at times, she wasn't stupid. friendship personification ordinary conversation friend talk insanity insane mental-illness psychology Rebecca McNutt
f483ea3 "I wish you were here," I say, shutting my eyes and remembering the way Dad looked in my hallucination. I hear his voice again, so real that I'm worried I'm about to fall into another hallucination. Maybe that's what I really want. If I can only see him in madness, is it worth trying to hold onto sanity?" sanity hallucination insanity Beth Revis
36f1e20 "The man is mollified. The systematic juices leave off bubbling, the fires sink, the coals are scattered. But the anger is still there, apart. Energy is never lost; a primal law. -"Mad House" science insanity Richard Matheson
a0a64be Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane. violence insanity Douglas Preston
bde88ee What is the difference between freedom and hedonism? Between freedom and insanity? freedom-of-speech hedonism insanity Karen Essex
5c0866e She had only two modes of operation: complete control or complete insanity. humor insanity Ilona Andrews
0da02e2 Alema said, 'Are you mad?' Ship thought it probably was, since it was beginning to take liking to her, but that was beside the point. The Emperor-to-Be was trying to break free; all they needed to do was open a hole for him. 'Us and what fleet?' Ship suggested. legacy-of-the-force inferno ship star-wars insanity Troy Denning
3ced8e9 There were no weapons of mass destruction. And we bombed them anyway. And, by the way he's destroyed the economy. He's squandered something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. It seems impossible to Tyler that that might not matter. It drives him insane. war politics w weapons-of-mass-destruction election bush economy george-w-bush president insanity Michael Cunningham
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