“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”

“The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms.”

“Any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.”

“All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”

“I could go on to speak of sanity as compared with insanity, decency as compared with vandalism, friendship as compared with rabies.”

“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.”

“It didn't matter much what Dwayne said. It hadn't mattered much for years. It didn't matter much what most people in Midland City said out loud, except when they were talking about money or structures or travel or machinery - or other measurable thins. Every person had a clearly defined part to play - as a black person, a female high school drop-out, a Pontiac dealer, a gynecologist, a gas-conversion burner installer. If a person stopped living up to expectations, because of bad chemicals or one thing or another, everybody went on imagining that the person was living up to expectations anyway.That was the main reason the people in Midland City were so slow to detect insanity in their associates. Their imaginations insisted that nobody changed much from day to day. Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of awful truth.”