It is proper that technically qualified non-lunatics should sit in judgement on lunatics. How could things be otherwise?

terms of those who loved her. She paid back their love with-well, with what? Malice? Not proven. Hate? Not proven. With the irrational? Yes; proven. In terms of the effect on her friends-such as...

Fat had phoned his pharmacy somewhere along the line to get a refill on his Librium prescription; he had taken thirty Librium just before taking the digitalis. The pharmacist had contacted the...

the universe consisted of misery and hostility and would get you in the end. He looked at the universe the way most people regard an unpaid bill; eventually they will force payment.

I've always told people that for each person there is a sentence-a series of words-which has the power to destroy him. When Fat told me about Leon Stone I realized {this came years after the first...

When you are Atlas you must carry a heavy load and if you drop it a lot of people suffer...

maintained his stance of cynicism, could not speak from grief; the two of them drove along and then Kevin slapped him on the shoulder, which is the only avenue open to men to show love for each other.

The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours {since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself.}

Dr Stone wasn't insane; Stone was a healer. He held down the right job. Probably he healed many people and in many ways. He adapted his therapy to the individual, not the individual to the therapy.

If you'll remember, helping people was one of the two basic things Fat has been told long ago to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm...

#36:...Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangements of part of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore, we are language. Why, then, do we not...

Insane people -- psychologically defined, not legally define -- are not in touch with reality.

A paranoiac, my friend, is a person who has gone crazy in the most intelligent, well-informed way, the world being what it is. The paranoiac believes that great secret conspiracies are afoot to...

It was as if I had trembled for a lifetime, due to a chronic underground current of fear. Tremare, run away, finish in trouble, lose the people I loved. As a cartoon character instead of a person, I...

There's something in the Bible about falling sparrows,' Kevin said. 'About his eye being on them. That's what's wrong with God: he only has one eye.

We were great builders, but one day we decided to play a game. We did it voluntarily; were we such good builders that we could build a maze with a way out but which constantly changed so that, despite...

Parcifal is one of those corkscrew artifact of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you've learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you...

What you should do, she told Fat during one of his darker hours, is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34. Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion...

The first thing that went wrong, according to Fat, had to do with the radio. Listening to it one night- he had not been able to sleep for a long time- he heard the radio saying hideous words,...

Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat's life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean...

A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.

Mental illness is not funny.

People suffering nervous breakdowns often do a lot of research, to find explanations for what they are undergoing. the research, of course fails.

Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals.

...like the rest of us he seeks an external savior.

What we really need is a doctor, not a spear.

I think," Dr. Stone said, "that when you tried to kill yourself you got in touch with reality for the first time.

I've always told people that for each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him. When Fat told me about Leon Stone I realized {this came years after the first...

Fat heard in her rational tone the harp of nihilism, the twang of the void.

That's the existential problem," Fat said, "based on the concept that We are what we do, rather than, We are what we think. It finds its first expression in Goethe's Faust, Part One, where Faust says,...