“We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.”

“Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?”

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.”

“For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a loony bin?”

“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells ofwarm earth. Suicide weather.”

“All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.”

“Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us. ”