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Book: Flowers for Algernon
Quotes of Book: Flowers for Algernon
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  1. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Am I a genius? I don't think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I'm exceptional-a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived {which used to mean bright and retarded} and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I've been exceptional.
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  2. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.
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  3. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge.
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  4. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    The depressing thing is that so many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking.
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  5. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    When you mature intellectually we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally you may not even want me.
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  6. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Strauss again brought up my need to speak and wrtie simply and directly so that people will understand me. He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway. Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.
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  7. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born. That's enough.
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  8. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Results are often negative. We learn what something is not-and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do.
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  9. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me?
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  10. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    If I didn't understand what was happening at the time, he says, then it doesn't matter. I'm no more to blame than the knife is to blame in a stabbing, or the car in a collision. "But I'm not an inanimate object," I argued. "I'm a ."He looked confused for a moment and then laughed. "Of course, Charlie. But I wasn't referring to now. I meant before the operation."Smug, pompous-I felt like hitting him too. "I was a person before the operation. In case you forgot-""Yes, of course, Charlie. Don't misunderstand. But it was different..." And then he remembered that he had to check some charts in the lab.
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  11. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else -- just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe -- beyond the universe -- because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being -- of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night -- and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain {how strange that light should blind!}, and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance.
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  12. Daniel Keyes _ Flowers for Algernon

    The most important thing had always been what other people thought-appearances before herself or her family. And righteous about it. Time and again Matt had insisted that what others thought about you wasn't the only thing in life. But it did no good. Norma had to dress well; the house had to have fine furniture; Charlie had to be kept inside so that other people wouldn't know anything was wrong.
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