quotations about insanity
We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.
JIM BUTCHER
Grave Peril
In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world.
R. D. LAING
The Divided Self
Insanity is never a purely mental disease.
MR. HILL
Hill on Insanity
Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.
TONI MORRISON
Beloved
A stroke from an insane person comes like a stroke of lightning; it cannot be avoided.
WALTER KEMPSTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
You'd think a house full of crazy people would be fun. It's actually really depressing.
BART SIMPSON
"Papa Don't Leech", The Simpsons
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.
MARK TWAIN
"A New Crime"
If all sane men were marked with chalk, and the insane with charcoal, there would soon be a scarcity of chalk.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now ... you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
You should humor crazy people when you're at their mercy.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Narcissus in Chains
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
They're laughing because they're mad, too mad to be able to tell what's funny any more. The rewards for being sane may not be very many but knowing what's funny is one of them.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Stanley and the Women
Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own.
ALYSSA REYANS
Letters from a Bipolar Mother