Norman O. Brown

“I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.”

“I've been impressed by the extent to which one gets sentenced by one's own sentences. One explores certain things in play and then in a strange way they become commitments which one has to live. I have gained a deep respect for the demonic power of the word. Words are not idle. They have consequences.”

“There is no breakthrough without breakage"--Love's Body”

“The human body is not a thing or a substance, given, but a continuous creation.”

“Meaning is not in things but in between them.”

“The insane do not share the normal prejudice in favor of external reality.”