Why must every literary examination of Robert Lowell, of John Berryman, of Anne Sexton, of Jean Stafford, of so many writers and artists, keep perpetuating the notion that their individual pieces of genius were the result of madness? While it may be true that a great deal of art finds its inspirational wellspring in sorrow, let's not kid ourselves about how much time each of those people wasted and lost by being mired in misery. —Elizabeth Wurtzel More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. —R.D. Laing More about this quote Tags: madness breakthrough Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I hate to advocate drugs, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. —Hunter S. Thompson More about this quote Tags: hate insanity violence drugs Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
But you learn to smother the living breathing soul, go deaf to it, and this violence to the self is what is commonly called sanity in the places where I have lived. —Philip Ó Ceallaigh More about this quote Tags: soul sanity violence Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. . . . I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it. —John Lennon More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more [combat] missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. —Joseph Heller More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I always made a point of telling the doctors I was sane, and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity, the more they doubted it. —Nellie Bly (pen name of journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who faked insanity to research a mental institution) More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Being considered or labeled mentally disordered — abnormal, crazy, mad, psychotic, sick, it matters not what variant is used — is the most profoundly discrediting classification that can be imposed on a person today. Mental illness casts the "patient" out of our social order just as surely as heresy cast the "witch" out of medieval society. That, indeed, is the very purpose of stigma terms. —Thomas Szasz More about this quote Tags: society stigma illness mental illness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that. —Mignon McLaughlin More about this quote Tags: repair appliances closedness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black. —Kelly Robinson More about this quote Tags: pessimism darkness irony Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
A broken leg can be remembered and located: "It hurt right below my knee, it throbbed, I felt sick at my stomach." But mental pain is remembered the way dreams are remembered — in fragments, unbidden realizations, like looking into a well and seeing the dim reflection of your face in that instant before the water shatters. —Tracy Thompson More about this quote Tags: memory pain psychology Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
When I dream, I am always ageless. —Elizabeth Coatsworth More about this quote Tags: age dreams agelessness Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
You know that there's a whole underground system that you call "dreams," having nothing better to call them, and that this system is not like roads or tunnels but more like a live body network, all coiling and stretching, unpredictable but finally familiar — where you are now, where you've always been. —Alice Munro More about this quote Tags: dreams body systems network Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream. —Vincent Van Gogh More about this quote Tags: dreams painting Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes, lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream — a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows — is essentially poetry. —Michel Leiris More about this quote Tags: poetry self thoughts dream Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email