"Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane."

-Ambrose Bierce

"I tell you: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star!"

-Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"While walking through the desert, I saw a creature. Naked, beastial. Who, squatting upon the ground, held it's heart in its hands... and ate of it. 'Is it good, friend?' I asked. "It is bitter... bitter," it replied. "But I like it because it IS bitter. And because it is my heart."

-Stephen Crane

"If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips."

Birgitte Silverbow, Robert Jordan
The Wheel of Time

"I am a little man and this is a little town but there must be a spark in a little man that can burst into flame."

-John Steinbeck

"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent."

-Bruno Jasienski Yasensky

"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways... There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain? "

-Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"I guess I could be pretty pissed about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure... but don't worry... You will someday."

 -Lester, American Beauty

"Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. "

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"I just honestly don't know what I have in common with those people anymore. I mean, or with anyone, really. I mean, they all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do, and what am I going to say? "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork... How have you been? "

-John Cusack, Grosse Pointe Black

"Houses are full of things that gather dust."

-Jack Kerouac


"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

-A.C.