“Define Normal”

“I loved the idea of a subversive world where mental illness was defined as just another version of normal, and education was how you made your way in the world, not something that began or ended.”

“You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string.”

“Haven, don't ask me to define the boundaries of normal. You know how I was raised. My father once struck strands of his own pubic hair onto a painting and sold it for a million dollars.”

“[Monty] talks about Fritz Perls and the Gestalt theory. The here and now is the only time that exists. And being yourself. Not accepting yourself, not taking yourself for granted. Being yourself. Your self. Monty defines 'normality' as a contententment with who you are.”

“But looking at this closet, so nice and arranged with their crazy lives at rest among these carefully placed clothes and footwear, she felt good about where they were. "Normal" was not a bad things in this lunatic world; it really was. No matter how it happened to be defined.”