“I’m like a man who’s been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”

“One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I’m inventing it. I’m like a man who’s been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”

“I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs.”

“Results are often negative. We learn what something is not - and that is as important as a positive discovery to the man who is going to pick up from there. At least he knows what not to do.”

“Algernon is a pleasant companion. At mealtimes, he takes his place at the small gateleg table. He likes pretzels, and today he took a sip of beer while we watched the ballgame on TV. I think he rooted for the Yankees.”

“And other times there would be tenderness and holding-close liek a warm bath, and hands stroking my hair and brow, and the words carved about the cathedral of my childhood: 'He's like all the other children. He's a good boy.”

“And now - Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: '...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.”