As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers.

Colds, ulcers, flu, and cancer are things we get. Schizophrenia is something we are.

Well, I thought, last night I paid my dues. I faced death. Now I can stay.

It happens all the time, I told her, some of us have bad vision, are crippled, have defects, and our reality is a different one, not the correct and ascertainable one, and sometimes it makes us dotty and lonely but it also makes us poets.

Long ago they lowered insane persons into snake pits; they thought that an experience that might drive a sane person out of his wits might send an insane person back to sanity.

We're all so near the edge, it's a wonder any of us functions at all.

If people behaved in the way nations do they would all be put into straightjackets.

Every man has a madness of his own.