“I have found both freedom and safety in
my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being
understood, for those who understand us, enslave something in us.” [How I Became a Madman]
“My friend, I am not what I seem … I am
mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone … My path is not thy
path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.” [My Friend]
“That which raineth for prayer and faith and supplication is not mice but bones.” [The Wise Dog]
“I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, when you are busy recreating life.” [The Seven Selves]
“And justice was satisfied.” [War]
“A mouse will do.” [The Fox]
“The king is mad … Surely we cannot be rules by a mad king. We must dethrone him.” [The Wise King]
“Until all were speaking, I could
distinguish nothing for the many voices. And so I moved that very day
into the heart of a quince, where the seeds are few and almost silent.” [The Pomegranate]
“Good morrow to thee, brother prisoner.” [The Two Cages]
“My friends, we are standing now on the
nose of the Supreme Ant, the mighty and infinite Ant, whose body is so
great that we cannot see it, whose shadow is so vast that we cannot
trace it, whose voice is so loud that we cannot her it; and He is
omnipresent.” [The Three Ants]
“Of all those who come here to bury, you
alone I like … Because, they come weeping and go weeping –you only come
laughing and go laughing.” [The Grave-Digger]
“Good day to you, brother.” [The Good God and the Evil God]
“Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword an
shield / In your eyes I have read / That to be enthroned is to be
enslaved / And to be understood is to be leveled down / And to be
grasped is but to reach one’s fullness / And like a ripe fruit to fall
and be consumed … Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage / You and I
shall laugh together with the storm / And together we shall dig graves
for all that die in us / And we shall stand in the sun with a will / And
we shall be dangerous.” [Defeat]
“Yea, we are twin brothers, O, Night; for thou revealest space and I reveal my soul.” [Night and the Madman]
“Let us go hence for there is no lonely,
hidden place where we can bathe. I would not have this wind lift my
golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light
disclose my scared nakedness.” [The Greater Sea]
The blind man from his birth placed his
hand upon his breast: “I am an astronomer. I watch all these suns and
moons and stars.” [The Astronomer]
Here I sit between my brother the
mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the
love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. Nay, it is
deeper than my sister’s depth and stronger than my brother’s strength,
and stranger than the strangeness of my madness … Upon whom I call in my
sleep I know not.” [The Great Longing]
“O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.” [Said a Blade of Grass]
“Something must be the matter with the Eye.” [The Eye]
“See, there lies the man whose Sorrow is dead.” [When My Sorrow was Born]
“And now I only remember my dead Joy in
remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs in
the wind and then is heard no more.” [And When My Joy was Born]
“It is a perfect world, a world of
consummate excellence, a world of supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in
God’s garden, the master-thought of the universe. But why should I be
here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that
seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt
planet? Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst
the gods?” [The Perfect World]
