“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.”

“The difference between mad people and sane people . . . is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over.”

“But the truth enters at the end of life.It enters like oxygen into every celland the madness it feeds there in someis only a lucid metaphorfor something long burned to nothing,like a star.How do you get under your desire?How do you peel away each desirelike ponderous clothes, one at a time,until what's underneath is known?”

“To begin cooking duck at one in the morning is one of the finest acts of madness that can be undertaken by a human being who is not mad.”

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”