“I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.”

“It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.”

“Maybe some poor slob would take you to bed if you weren’t such a ballbuster.”

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

“But I do know a kind of madness that lies low in the mind, half-buried in consciousness, which lives in parallel to sanity, and given the right circumstances or even just half a chance, creeps like a lick of flame or a growing tumour up and around ordinary perception, consuming it for a while, and causing one, even when not at the movies, to quake in fear of the world and people and what they--I mean, of, we--are capable of.”

“The way I see it people don't do what they want to do often enough. They just do some alternative which they'd kind of like to do, which isn't the same thing at all, and as a result that thing isn't enough and they end up depressed and annoyed with everyone else around them.”