Mad Person Quotes

• The mad person who knows that they are mad is close to sanity.

  Juan Ruiz de Alarcon

  Mad, Sanity, Persons

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• Purity is essential for just your own peace of mind; otherwise, you'll go through this world like a mad person, howling and screaming and cursing, never satisfied, never happy.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Mad, Mind

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• For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.

  Margaret Atwood

  Song, Book, Play

  "Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

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• In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real.

  Paul Virilio

  Real, Mad, Way

  Source: ctheory.net

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• The moment when a limit is reached, when there is nothing ahead but darkness: something comes in to help that is not real. Another way all this is like madness: a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.

  Lydia Davis

  Real, Mad, Darkness

  Lydia Davis (2008). “Break It Down: Stories”, p.15, Macmillan

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• A mad person sees what isn't there; A visionary sees what isn't there yet

  Judith Thurman

  Mad, Visionaries, Persons

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• The beloved's innocence brutalizes the lover. As the singing of a mad person behind you on the train enrages you, its beautiful animal-like teeth shining amid black planes of paint. As Helen enrages history. Senza uscita.

  Anne Carson

  Beautiful, Animal, Mad

  Anne Carson (2015). “Plainwater: Essays and Poetry”, p.88, Vintage

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• I like you because you were mad. And you're pretty. And pretty sane for a mad person.

  Maureen Johnson

  I Like You, Mad, Sane

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• The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out.

  Sylvia Plath

  Play, People, Mad

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.79, Hamilton Books

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• You don't understand, you fool' says Yegor, looking dreamily up at the sky. 'You've never understood what kind of person I am, nor will you in a million years... You just think I'm a mad person who has thrown his life away... Once the free spirit has taken hold of a man, there's no way of getting it out of him.

  Anton Chekhov

  Taken, Thinking, Men

  "About Love and Other Stories". Book by Anton Chekhov (p. 4), June 10, 2004.

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• Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience - who knows when such a malady may strike?

  Margaret Atwood

  Artist, Mad, People

  "Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

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• I'm not going to rush anything and scamper around like a mad person and make myself crazy.

  Michelle Williams

  Crazy, Mad, Persons

  "Michelle Williams Laughs, Cries and Talks". Interview with Leslie Bennetts, www.marieclaire.com. January 12, 2011.

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• Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child's mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in Colonial days in America, if you proposed that kind of idea, they'd burn you at the stake, you mad person! It's a mad idea!

  John Taylor Gatto

  Children, Years, Ideas

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• I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice. That's my film career, most of the time.

  Dylan Moran

  Careers, Phones, Giving

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