We seldom consider how much of our lives we must render in return for some object we barely want, seldom need, buy only because it was put before us…And this is understandable given the workings...

You aren’t crazy,’ he says. ‘What?’ ‘I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.’ Those may...

Taking a break from digging into your own issues doesn’t make you unauthentic. It makes you sane.

But maybe that isn’t possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it’s the definition of madness to believe I’m right and everyone else...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.