“Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. ”

“The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I tho...”

“Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is Crazy isnt being broken or swallowing a dark secret. Its you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a chil...”

“Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, dependin...”

“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 ...”

“Recovered. Had my personality crossed over that border, whatever and wherever it was, to resume life within the confines of normal? Had I stopped arguing with my personality and learned to straddle...”

“As hard as we strive, man remains a perfect imperfect being.”

“People were crazy with pain and secrets.”

“Its not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, Okay, world, today Im gonna spaz.”

“Don't just stand there and nod. The mind observes and cogitates, the heart engages, and I would encourage you to engage with the process.”

“The necessary and needful reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas. The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow. The shado...”

“The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are itwe become unconscious of ourselves. That is the age-old danger, instinctively known and feared by primitive man, who himself stands so very close ...”

“Corum knew that he was mad, in Vadhagh terms. But he supposed that he was sane enough in Mabden terms. And this was, after all, now a Mabden world. He must learn to accept its peculiar disorders as...”

“As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.”

“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”