There is a pleasure sure In being mad, which none but madmen know!

I was just sort of moving through time.

... I went through a very lethargic period ... I was just sort of getting through every night and every day.

Great brains (like brightest glass), crack straight; while those of stone or wood hold out, and fear not blows.

O this poor brain! ten thousand shapes of fury are whirling there, and reason is no more.

"The sooner you 'settle' the sooner you'll be allowed home" was the ruling logic; and "if you can't adapt yourself to living in a mental hospital how do you expect to be able to live 'out in the world'?" How indeed?

The bottom of my life had been whisked away; I was falling, falling again. Where would I land?

... somewhere in the illness ... lay a hidden strength.

... she looked out into the congregation on Sunday and wondered if they ever thanked God for the light in their minds, for friends, for cold and pain responsive to the laws of nature, for enough depth of sight into these laws to have expectations, for friends, for the days and nights that follow one another in stately rhythm, for the sparks that fly upward ...

... this sickness, which everyone shied from and was frightened of, was also an adjustment.