“What does crazy mean? Crazy is when one's idea of the truth isn't the same as most people's idea of the truth. (139)”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but you’re crazy enough to be a Wraith.""Until you’ve crewed with me for a few years, kid, you have no idea what ‘crazy’ means.”

“I opened the book to the title page, which said the book was "A Fictional Memoir." I had no idea what this meant, except that maybe it was one of the ways that Exley was crazy: maybe when he called his book a fictional memoir, it meant that he couldn't make up his mind, which is one of the things people really mean when they call someone crazy.”

“That’s not true. I love you more than my life, Pigeon,” he said, hurt.“That’s exactly what I mean. That’s crazy talk.”“It’s not crazy. It’s the truth.”

“Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?”

“To hell with ideas—if people always did what, on careful consideration, was in their most selfish interest, there would be nothing with the world, there would be nothing wrong with the world. Who wants to die and starve? Nobody. If people weren’t driven crazy by ideas and their God, nobody would, for instance, go to war in order to starve and to die a beastly death.”