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a9b5749 It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. qotd madness reality Philip K. Dick
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
bf3baed I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. madness safety madman Kahlil Gibran
88d36fb "I turned to Dionysus. "You cured him?" "Madness is my specialty. It was quite simple." "But...you did something nice. Why?" He raised and eyebrow. "I am nice! I simple ooze niceness, Perry Johansson. Haven't you noticed?" madness humor nice percy-jackson sarcasm Rick Riordan
53ee716 First sign of madness, talking to your own head. madness J.K. Rowling
3fc1fe3 "And how do you know that you're mad? "To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" I suppose so, said Alice. "Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad." -- madness cheshire-cat cats Lewis Carroll
59f2c93 All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. madness survival Yann Martel
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
6bdf9c2 When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. madness reality manic-depression mental-illness Marya Hornbacher
d2186d6 Doubt ... is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness. madness knowledge Gustave Flaubert
14a7e0e "Actually, the problem is that I lose my mind," I said. "It's inescapable." madness sanity John Green
656f9e3 If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end! madness H.P. Lovecraft
7f90920 Too much sanity may be madness -- and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be! madness sanity inspirational Dale Wasserman
d3aa175 Have you heard of the illness ? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's . madness hysteria-siberiana arctic farmer emptiness siberia Haruki Murakami
6254357 Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me. madness time Susanna Clarke
1318256 Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em. madness shakespeare mad insane william-shakespeare Emilie Autumn
7701a27 Soon madness has worn you down. It's easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you're worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs. madness surrender worthless eating-disorder voice Marya Hornbacher
f22b870 Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. madness love William Shakespeare
08bb5fd True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. madness guilt Edgar Allan Poe
422fa61 We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter madness writing loyalty mental-illness Allen Ginsberg
c408ac2 Men have called me mad; but the question is not 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. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the 'light ineffable'. poe madness Edgar Allan Poe
f537768 "Is it so far from madness to wisdom?" - Daenerys Targaryen" madness wisdom George R.R. Martin
f89e702 Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy? madness death life Libba Bray
370af40 Much Madness is divinest Sense -- To a discerning Eye -- Much Sense -- the starkest Madness -- 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail -- Assent -- and you are sane -- Demur -- you're straightway dangerous -- And handled with a Chain -- madness sanity poetry Emily Dickinson
560b6bc "He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced." universe madness Douglas Adams
57ef2a1 Dearest Cecilia, You'd be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don't think I can blame the heat. madness lovers love Ian McEwan
8ad9c7f Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth. madness sofa Douglas Adams
f1a289e The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it. madness normalcy Robert Anton Wilson
8eb2972 wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness madness tessa-gray clockwork-prince infernal-devices will-herondale misery Cassandra Clare
d72a86f Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. madness Charles MacKay
76bdd71 The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. madness lovecraft the-sea sublime horror Herman Melville
a0745e4 Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness. madness may june Karen Joy Fowler
f20b855 You don't seem mad at all,' she said. But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete? madness thoughts life philosophy expectations Paulo Coelho
e9cca04 Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it. madness sanity Douglas Adams
a846a54 "You've been inexpressibly lucky," he said finally. "And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing" madness uprooted Naomi Novik
3f9c401 "Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched--by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever." (p.33)" madness prayer depression god asymmetry atlantic blind-man blossom left-eye living-things nineteen-years-old power-of-sight clock tree sacraments bones starlight apple wind autumn colors smile questions mirror horror journey eyes Tim Willocks
fd710ef Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called 'the madness of saintliness'. They have been joyful - because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender. madness true-love fear saintliness surrender Paulo Coelho
aba43be Madness is only an amplification of what you already are. madness Margaret Atwood
b47b18d June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never again know who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childish pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness. madness lovers love lesbian-lgbt sincerity Anaïs Nin
f4a58d0 Some people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy. madness joy bewildered incoherence sparks nervous energy despair sickness Luke Davies
619569f We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement. madness solitude humanity illusions delusions William Golding
e889621 He began to cry, not hysterically or screaming as people cry when concealed rage with tears, but with continuous sobs who has just discovered that he's alone and will be for long. He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility. madness loneliness reason Stephen King
b006460 Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two. madness love movies Louis de Bernières
dc8d582 It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. madness humanity fear truth colonizer nuclear-threat nuclear-bomb whiteness folly white nuclear-weapons danger humans mind-control Arundhati Roy
b8cc331 O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence! madness love Georgette Heyer
2e79d83 excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand. madness inspiration intellectual enthusiasm William Blake
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
b3cb3bc Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing. madness Penelope Fitzgerald
545a181 All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. madness sanity instrumental-rationality means modern-age efficiency ends modernity Herman Melville
8026c37 GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws -- riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public -- knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong. ROS: And talking to himself. GUIL: And talking to himself. madness humour plays Tom Stoppard
114dbed "Bashere shrugged, grinning brhind his grey-streaked moustaches, "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?" "Why didn't somebody do something? His Family?" "Those not as mad as him, or madder, were afraid to look at him sideways. Tenobia's father wouldn't have let anyone touch Cheade anyway. He might have been insane, but he could outgeneral anyone I ever saw. He never lost a battle. He never even came close to losing." -- madness humor Robert Jordan
83bfb38 "Bashere shrugged, grinning brhind his grey-streaked moustaches, "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?" "Why didn't somebody do something? His Family?" "Those not as mad as him, or madder, were afraid to look at him sideways. Tenobia's father wouldn't have let anyone touch Cheade anyway. He might have been insane, but he could outgeneral anyone I ever saw. He never lost a battle. He never even came close to losing." madness humor Robert Jordan
fcceca9 Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love. madness love falling sudden mental-illness Marya Hornbacher
e8460f0 All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world. madness van-helsing Bram Stoker
a769ec9 It is true that I am a person with black pockets of evil and hatred in my heart. There are underground places inside of me hatred madness sadness hurt teenager Lynda Barry
5deef2d In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. madness hysteria Charles MacKay
b73d7ea Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness. madness health Jeanette Winterson
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
4420f39 "The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through. ... And when the Big Nurse...came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage... an outrage..." at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that's a toilet bowl...a TOILET bowl." madness Ken Kesey
c6987e1 Don't give into him at all. Deny yourself. Because then your eyes will not be clouded by a madness that you cannot control, and then you will be able to learn to see him as he is. Do you understand? madness waiting patience Louis de Bernières
dd9c4b3 Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again. madness David Foster Wallace
d7e59d8 "<<...you're too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You've had bad internet dates. You've had people be creeps to you. You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world>> <> madness ideology Douglas Coupland
b974cbf "I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders madness poetry life drugs Allen Ginsberg
f014297 <> madness poem crazy dreams-inspirational Charles Baudelaire
40c8506 It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. madness heroes strength innocence memory James Baldwin
5ab42bf "Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me--little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. lovely madness lovers new-day gratitude drinking joy inspiration sadness music songs happiness hope be-okay fine panic-attacks park starving panic-attack chest sound ed okay self-destruction wellness grateful hopeful anxiety alcohol coffee spring well-being art singing hurt balance sky flowers crying focus panic sing tears walking hopeless recovery sad self-harm smoking mental-health Charlotte Eriksson
6daac7c To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition - irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad. mankind madness horror Peter Straub
759cb2e I'll love you with all the madness in my soul. madness love bruce-springsteen soul Bruce Springsteen
b0dab70 Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad. madness magic Susanna Clarke
d639c2d I do not believe that a dream should necessarily be taken for reality, or reality for madness. madness reality Adolfo Bioy Casares
c07bec7 "Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws - "Love is blind." But it may be the other way around. Love allows a person to see the true angelic nature of another person, the halo, the aureole of divinity. Certainly from the perspective of ordinary life this is madness and illusion. But if we let loose our hold on our philosophies and psychologies of enlightenment and reason, we might learn to appreciate the perspective of eternity that enters life as madness, Plato's divine frenzy." lover madness enlightenment illusion imagination love craving platohtenment divinity divine Thomas Moore
b7fb81c Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future.. madness Charles MacKay
757197b It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war. madness war reason H.G. Wells
d513cca Here I want to stress that perception of losing one's mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to the significance of symptoms such as hearing voices, losing temporal and spatial orientation, and sensing that one is being followed, and that many of the most spectacular and convincing of these symptoms in some instances psychiatrically signify merely a temporary emotional upset in a stressful situation, however terrifying to the person at the time. Similarly, the anxiety consequent upon this perception of oneself, and the strategies devised to reduce this anxiety, are not a product of abnormal psychology, but would be exhibited by any person socialized into our culture who came to conceive of himself as someone losing his mind. stereotypes madness stigmatization mental-health-stigma stigma stigmatized mental-hospital Erving Goffman
f297dca "You know those afternoons," he asks, drawing a shaking breath, "where you're just going along, doing fine, and then afternoon comes and it feels like you've just got the wind knocked out of you and everything is wrong?" He sighs and slowly pushes himself so he's sitting upright. His shoulders are slumped. "That's all," he says. "It's just one of those afternoons." We are silent for a minute. Then he lies back down on the couch. I should say I love him. I should say it will be all right. But it won't. I walk down the hall to my bedroom. I lie down on my side and stare at the wall, the blue-flowered wallpaper next to my nose. Despite my best efforts, I start to cry. I know those afternoons." madness hornbacher Marya Hornbacher
665baf9 All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too. madness William Saroyan
97e1f4d ... your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me... madness love fury Charlotte Brontë
10aa16b ...and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad. madness waste-of-time on-the-road Jack Kerouac
2aa730d And never, never, dear madam, put 'Wednesday' simply as the date! madness time Lewis Carroll
9f6990b I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness. madness unreal nothingness uncertainty night Mohsin Hamid
a0905f0 But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness. madness Daphne du Maurier
ffe2069 That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand. madness mental-illness Audrey Niffenegger
6cbc87a If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale madness John Kenneth Galbraith
378b8d8 An intense life needs a touch of madness. madness Paulo Coelho
7c7a9c0 Some say that you should turn your face from the light of the moon. They say it makes you mad. I turn my face towards it and I laugh. Make me mad, I whisper. Go on, make Mina mad. I laugh again. Some people think that she's already mad, I think. madness moon nonconformity weirdness moonlight David Almond
037fcdf Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them. madness nausea Jean-Paul Sartre
8af855c At least I rescued your poor hot dog. madness grief funny humor disturbing frightening ghoul gives-me-the-willies savior pyrokinesis sleepaway-camp summer-camp wiener wiener-roast goosebumps spooky hot-dog rescue coming-of-age teenage lord fire ghost scary teen lonely laugh nostalgia R.L. Stine
0b12a41 Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know. madness positive-thinking theory-of-consequences hypocrisy E. Nesbit
72f1861 Bedlam: an institution with a history so fearsome it gave its name to a synonym for chaos and pandemonium. madness institution Jon Ronson
4899d1d He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths. He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding what must never be found, we all round that first corner by choice - and by then, we are lost. You too. You must decide what is false and what is true, and what is true for me but not for you. We are wandering the mazes, all of us, and we cannot hope to escape until we learn to tell between what is real and what is real for someone else. There lies the madness, and the truth as well. madness theseus monsters psychology Troy Denning
954a1d3 "In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee: "Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight." It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest." madness soulful Vladimir Nabokov
3c5dc38 Mais, vrai, J'ai trop pleure! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I'd always hoped that someday I'd be able to use it. madness sanity the-secret-history suicide-note Donna Tartt
d61031c Oh the madness of battle! We fear it, we celebrate it, the poets sing of it, and when it fills the blood like fire it is a real madness. It is joy! All the terror is swept away, a man feels he could live for ever, he sees the enemy retreating, knows he himself is invincible, that even the gods would shrink from his blade and his bloodied shield. And I was still keening that mad song, the battle song of slaughter, the sound that blotted out the screams of dying men and the crying of the wounded. It is fear, of course, that feeds the battle madness, the release of fear into savagery. You win in the shield wall by being more savage than your enemy, by turning his savagery back into fear. madness war fear shield-wall savagery Bernard Cornwell
29d432e Do you know, I began to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them--children, duties, visits, bores, relations--the things that protect married people from each other. We've been too close together--that has been our sin. We've seen the nakedness of each other's souls. madness marriage Edith Wharton
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
2b1e133 "I took a few dragging steps toward the locker-room door. 'You're doing something to me that I wouldn't do to a dog,' I mumbled. 'What you're doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You're locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. You're taking my mind away from me. You're condemning me slowly but surely to madness, to being without a mind. It won't happen right away, but sooner or later, in six months or in a year - Well, I guess that's that.' I fumbled my way out of the locker room and down the passageway outside, guiding myself with one arm along the wall, and past the sergeant's desk and down the steps, and then I was out in the street. ("All At Once, No Alice")" madness Cornell Woolrich
eba2dfa ...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul. madness darkness fire Herman Melville
54bc618 All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous. madness academia maud-bailey scholarship obsession A.S. Byatt
34a74be Emancipation resulting in madness. Unlimited freedom to choose and play a tremendous variety of roles with a lot of coarse energy. madness unlimited-freedom Saul Bellow
09ea63f You wish you had not come. If there were not so many around, you would reach out your arms, with the prayer on your lips for it all to come back to you. It seems cruel, cruel, to give us such a vision; to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives. madness murder magic dreams the-worlds-fair world-fair Erik Larson
2ab0b40 If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us. madness sanity tragedy life Alain de Botton
a61f451 The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The past is a labyrinth. One does not have to step into it and move step by step through every turn and twist. The past reveals itself instantly, in today's fever or abscess of the soul. madness past-and-present neurosis Anaïs Nin
93d3ac8 I often wondered how it would be to tramp off into the mountains and keep going until I was exhausted, then simply sink into the snow and fall asleep. Then the wolves could have me. To want to die in the forest and be eaten by wolves: another marker of incipient madness. suicide madness wolves trauma snow Patrick McGrath
54414be We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that--we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties--the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No. madness bipolar-disorder mania Marya Hornbacher
0c3789a "Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then: "I wonder why." ... Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road--and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright--and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. ... Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another type of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of the pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare." madness pain heroes strength life-choices innocence-lost garden-of-eden innocence James Baldwin
ff32ec8 Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him. madness past undoing study mystery obsession H.P. Lovecraft
87ee637 All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. madness living-things Yann Martel
4791080 Act - make an event. Smash the coordinates and see where the smithereens fly. Let in the madness, and be sure to be a danger to oneself and others. Too much thinking turns you into that fool Hamlet. madness Hanif Kureishi
e25e765 All habits are bad habits. (...) Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. madness rebellionllion tamed habits G.K. Chesterton
bec78ff He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once - although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now. madness confessions mentall-illness guilt Peter Ackroyd
dee0cac "I don't think I could ever see her closely," the sentinel replied, "however close she came." His own voice was hushed and regretful, echoing with lost chances. "She has a newness," he said. "Everything is for the first time. See how she moves, how she walks, how she turns her head -- all for the first time, the first time anyone has ever done these things. See how she draws her breath and lets it go again, as though no one else in the world knew that air was good. It is all for her. If I learned that she had been born this very morning, I would only be surprised that she was so old." The second sentinel stared down from his tower at the three wanderers. The tall man saw him first, and next the dour woman. Their eyes reflected nothing but his armor, grim and cankered and empty. But then the girl in the ruined black cloak raised her head, and he stepped back from the parapet, putting out one tin glove against her glance. In a moment she passed into the shadow of the castle with her companions, and he lowered his hand. "She may be mad," he said calmly. "No grown girl looks like that unless she is mad. That would be annoying, but far preferable to the remaining possibility." "Which is?" the younger man prompted after a silence. "Which is that she was indeed born this morning. I would rather that she were mad." madness supernatural Peter S. Beagle
8f96f61 He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing, One fine day in the middle of the night, Two dead men got up to fight and then he knew what was meant by madness. madness 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
d2a31ee You see, I'm not mad, I suffer from depression. It's not like ordinary misery. It's like dying of boredom. It's . madness depression the-green-knight iris-murdoch misery Iris Murdoch
921a34f For him, behind every feeling and thought was the sense of the open door leading into nothingness. To be sure, he suffered from dread of many things, of madness, the police, insomnia, and also dread of death. But everything he dreaded he likewise desired and longed for at the same time. He was full of burning curiosity about suffering, destruction, persecution, madness and death. madness klein-and-wagner dread Hermann Hesse
9e95221 He was mad, and for that, we have reason to be glad. A truly savage irony, on which it is discomforting to dwell. madness Simon Winchester
f0f3f06 ... somewhere in my heart, however, I continued to believe that intense and lasting love was possible only in a climate of somewhat tumultuous passions. This, I felt, consigned me to being with a man whose temperament was largely similar to my own. I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no substitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not aways boring. On the contrary. It has been with pleasure, and not inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth... madness passion love normality Kay Redfield Jamison
c62c941 [I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr's crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised 'multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes'. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill - and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn't they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability. More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this was a glory that was open to all, regardless of rank, education, wealth or sex. The sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out that - provided you believe in its promised rewards - martyrdom is a perfectly rational choice. A martyr could begin the day of their death as one of the lowliest people in the empire and end it as one of the most exalted in heaven. So tempting were these rewards that pious Christians born outside times of persecution were wont to express disappointment at being denied the opportunity of an agonizing death. When the later Emperor Julian pointedly avoided executing Christians in his reign, one Christian writer far from being grateful, sourly recorded that Julian had 'begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants'. madness equality christianity sacrifice monotheism martyrdom Catherine Nixey
6c3f354 " She shook her head. "You keep getting mixed up. I'm supposed to be protecting you. I'm your doctor." She lifted her head, green eyes searching his face. "You've never lived with a woman? You must have had sex." "I don't understand. Without a lifemate, Carpathians feel nothing?" Color flooded her face. "You feel desire when you're with me. I may not be experienced, but I do have medical training." His fingers tightened around hers, his breath warm along her knuckles. His black eyes, worn with suffering, fastened on her green ones. She didn't want to touch that. She murmured his name softly, brushed a kiss against his temple almost without knowing it. " madness beast jacques-and-shea Christine Feehan
ced46ed I wondered what sort of woman loved a man like that. madness Jon Ronson
65d1ac5 She looked at me again, and the sweet and shy Nicole disappeared. Her eyes blazed. she said. As Nicole raged, the hair on my neck prickled, because in her eyes, I saw madness. Obsession and madness. You're crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you? I started inching back. she said. She screamed, a long drawn-out shriek of feigned terror. madness insult nicole rant maya obsession Kelley Armstrong
5fb7518 There is a madness in love. madness Jacqueline Carey
03ad505 Excess of grief may bring on quite as fine a bout of madness an an excess of any thing else. Truth to tell, I was not quite myself for a time. Truth to tell, I was a little wild. madness Susanna Clarke
fc46871 And he wonders, deep in the self-isolated recesses of his mind whether he is killing himself with anger, whether he is destroying his system with fury. madness isolation Richard Matheson
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