Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (…)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension...

It is at this hour that I am in my right mind: it is all the rest of the day that I am enchanted.

The city is sore with movement, but still it oscillates. Busy people churn through grey-toned streets, their briefcases held close, rustling against trouser legs. The collective machine is tired, but each worker drives on. Gleaming taxis mirror stiletto heels, warping perfection. Laughter is rare, loud and sharp and these people want to believe they breathe,...

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.

Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don’t understand.

One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.

Kaysen elaborates through parts of the book on her thoughts about how mental illness is treated. She explains that families who are willing to pay the rather high costs of hospitalization do so to prove their own sanity. Once one member of the family is hospitalized, it becomes easier for the rest of the family...

Self talk and self prayer: When you audible the first and correctly interpret, the white coats correct you in a nuthouse. When you audible the second and misinterpret, the dinner coats swear you to an oath in the White House. Does this make you nuts too? Then outfit your sanity seeking political asylum at my...

No trees, sky or ground. No other buildings or fields. No winding path, no brambles, no outhouse or pond or flowers, no sunshine or children playing. Just blackness.

It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man.

An idea can destroy the mind of a human being, twist it into a dark path of destruction and illness. But only the human can destroy the mind with a bullet to the soul. Ideas do not kill people; they ruin them. People kill people.

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we’ll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

People who’re nuts never doubt their own sanity. (The Killer’s Cousin)

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one’s self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that...

The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.

If I can only see him in madness, is it worth trying to hold onto sanity?

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.

I don’t desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home- and my sanity depends on it.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going...

The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

Dwelling on the loneliness inherent in a city such as this when you dream of endless mountains and expanses of blue sky is a recipe for torment.

At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,’ was his mildly cadaverous reply.

That’s a compliment for anyone who knows the freedom and clarity of losing their mind,” he reaffirmed her.

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness – in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

He couldn’t even find the will to yell at her now. A real man didn’t yell at those who weren’t exactly sane themselves, he told himself.

Conventions are, indeed, all that shield us from the shivering void, though often they do so but poorly and desperately.

Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren’t? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?

I can’t get his bonesto go down the fucking drain.I try to stuff the tiny holes,too tiny for this pain.I can’t get his bonesto break any way for my gain.Break them back a little too far,never too far for the sake of sane.

Even though I knew, deep down, what she was trying to do, I couldn’t hate her. Even when she hurt me, I forgave her.

You think you’re losing your mind, but do keep in mind, as long as you may, that the ability to go on thinking such a thing means it’s not all gone.

There’s a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had him. If I had someone like him, it would prove that I’m stable, and then I wouldn’t have to do...

Christ,” he said to the tiny reflection of himself that floated along the surface of his coffee,”You have become quite the maudlin sop, haven’t you? Laughing softly, he rubbed a hand over his face. Step one on the road back to sanity, stop talking to yourself.

Reality is a hallucination shared by most sane men.

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.

You knew then that this was not any kind of hospital that cured, but a hospital that held, that kept their patients away from the rest of the world, a kind of ark that floated along full of life, but not participating in life…. These people no longer made progress.

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.

Yet mad I am not…and very surely do I not dream.

Ariella was silent, and I reached out to take her hand, squeezing as if it were a lifeline, holding me to sanity.

Once upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aStop this. It’s undignified.

Nobody sane wants to disappoint himself intentionally.

When psychotherapy began, it was about the practitioner listening to a patient and interpreting what the patient said, in order to afford the patient insights about his or her psyche. But now we understand that the main curative part of psychotherapy is the relationship itself. It appears not to be relevant which psychology school the...

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity

A thick rivulet of lost blood reflects a city that will mourn but never die.

When you get to the end of your rope. Tie a knot and hang on.

The mountains knew the definition of freedom. They provided a place where he could find his mind.

Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store–He frightened it to the core–Yet somehow, by Fate’s plan,Though he’d lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.