MEMORY'S SO TREACHEROUS. ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A CARNIVAL OF DELIGHTS, WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD AROMAS , THE FLASHING NEON OF PUBERTY, ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL CANDY-FLOSS ...THE NEXT , IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO......SOMEWHERE DARK AND COLD, FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE FORGOTTEN. MEMORIES CAN BE VILE, REPULSIVE LITTLE BRUTES. LIKE CHILDREN, I SUPPOSE. HAHA. BUT CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT THEM? MEMORIES ARE WHAT OUR REASON IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T FACE THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF!ALGHOUGH, WHY NOT? WE AREN'T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY! THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE! SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS UNBEARABLE, REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS MADNESS. MADNESS IS THE EMERGENCY EXIT... YOU CAN JUST STEP OUTSIDE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM AWAY... FOREVER.

Durante el tiempo en que permaneció en su celda Ivánov se hizo amigo de una rata a la que puso el nombre de Nikita.Por las noches, cuando la rata aparecía, Ivánov sostenía largas conversaciones con ella. No hablaban, como pudiera suponerse, de literatura ni mucho menos de política sino de sus respectivas infancias. Ivánov le contaba a la rata cosas de su madre, en la que solía pensar a menudo, y cosas de sus hermanos, pero evitaba hablar de su padre. La rata, en un ruso apenas susurrado, le hablaba a su vez de las alcantarillas de Moscú, del cielo de las alcantarillas en donde, debido al florecimiento de ciertos detritus o a un proceso de fosforescencia inexplicable, siempre hay estrellas. Le hablaba también de la tibieza de su madre, de las travesuras sin sentido de sus hermanas y de la enorme risa que estas travesuras solían provocarle y que aún hoy, en el recuerdo, le dibujaban una sonrisa en su escuálida cara de rata.A veces Ivánov se dejaba llevar por el abatimiento, apoyaba una mejilla en la palma de la mano y le preguntaba a Nikita qué sería de ellos.

Vaas: Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy. The first time somebody told me that, I dunno, I thought they were bullshitting me, so, I shot him. The thing is... He was right. And then I started seeing, everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked all these fucking pricks, everywhere I looked, doing the exact same fucking thing... over and over and over and over again thinking 'this time is gonna be different' no, no, no please... This time is gonna be different, I'm sorry, I don't like... The way...[Punches crate aside violently. His agitation towards the player character is visibly growing]Vaas: ... you are looking at me... Okay, Do you have a fucking problem in your head, do you think I am bullshitting you, do you think I am lying? Fuck you! Okay? Fuck you!... It's okay, man. I'm gonna chill, hermano. I'm gonna chill... The thing is... Alright, the thing is I killed you once already... and it's not like I am fucking crazy. It's okay... It's like water under the bridge. Did I ever tell you the definition... of insanity?

I suddenly remembered that Murray Gell-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on the present situation of high-energy physics. My talk was set for the plenary session, so I asked the guide, "Sir, where would the talks for the plenary session of the conference be?""Back in that room that we just came through.""Oh!" I said in delight. "Then I'm gonna give a speech in that room!"The guide looked down at my dirty pants and my sloppy shirt. I realized how dumb that remark must have sounded to him, but it was genuine surprise and delight on my part. We went along a little bit farther, and the guide said, "This is a lounge for the various delegates, where they often hold informal discussions." They were some small, square windows in the doors to the lounge that you could look through, so people looked in. There were a few men sitting there talking. I looked through the windows and saw Igor Tamm, a physicist from Russia that I know. "Oh!" I said. "I know that guy!" and I started through the door.The guide screamed, "No, no! Don't go in there!" By this time he was sure he had a maniac on his hands, but he couldn't chase me because he wasn't allowed to o through the door himself!

He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing,One fine day in the middle of the night,Two dead men got up to fightand then he knew what was meant by madness.

From around the corner's edge a grotesque light was trickling out, the first intimations of an ominous sunrise over a dark horizon. I dimly recognized this colored light, though not from my waking memory. It grew more intense, now pouring out in weird streams from beyond the solid margin of the building. And the more intense it grew, the more clearly I could hear the screaming voice that had called out to me in a dream. I shouted his name, but the swelling colored brightness was a field of fear which kept me from making any move toward it. It was no amalgam of colors comparable to anything in mortal experience. It was as if all natural colors had been mutated into a painfully lush iridescence by some prism fantastically corrupted in its form; it was a rainbow staining the sky after a poison deluge; it was an aurora painting the darkness with a blaze of insanity, a blaze that did not burn vigorously but shimmered with an insect-jeweled frailness. And, in actuality, it was nothing like these color-filled effusions, which are merely a feeble means of partially fixing a reality uncommunicable to those not initiated to it, a necessary resorting to the makeshift gibberish of the mystic isolated by his experience and left without a language to describe it.("The Dreaming In Nortown")

A fox will chew off its own foot before it calls for helpBut he saw glory in being a bird with broken wings And therefore he broke his own to fit into that illusion of false injusticeSomething to rebel againstA background story he saw as grandA painful childhood dreamt up by him aloneHe saw splendor in his wounds and majesty in his scarsWhich were all self-inflicted…self-proclaimedAll in attempt to be magnificent and madBut instability doesn't call itself unstableAnd a fox will chew off its own foot before it calls for helpAlas, life seemed more boundless if one had a limp A black-eyeOr scared wrists And instead of tattooing his story, he carved it in his own skinWith a rusty blade of self-pity and needA dull deep need that could never be quenched no matter how deep he cutIn a black and white world he wished for all to marvel at the red he could caress out of himselfA twisted delusion of what the world would revere atBegging with lies of pain and spasms for all to stay a little whileSee him as wicked…see him as perverse…anything but ordinaryBe in awe of his self-inflicted tragedy that was his falsehood and mistaken identityHe saw glory in being a bird with broken wings And therefore he broke his own to fit into that illusion of false injusticeHe saw splendor in his wounds and grandeur in his scarsAll in attempt to be magnificent and madBut instability doesn't call itself unstable

If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or æsthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else—mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.

It's true,' replied Doris with a sniff in Bessy's direction to make her sensible of a victory, even if a minor one. 'It is amazing how so many people go insane. One day a man is a normal, friendly husband and the next he suddenly becomes a raging schizoid and slays his wife and himself as well. The result of what cause? Why, perhaps he chanced to find some schoolgirl treasure of another beau who had been his greatest rival and is stunned to discover that she secretly retains this. But usually the matter is not so simple, you know. Next to nothing may happen, jarring awake some sleeping monstrosity in a man's complex mental machinery and turning him from a sane person to a mentally sick individual. It is wholly impossible to say when a man is sane, for' -she tittered- 'scarce one of us is normal.''You mean - it might happen to any of us?''Of course,' said Doris, charmed by all this interest. 'One moment we are seated here, behaving normally and the next some tiny thing, a certain voice, a certain combination of thoughts may throw out the balance wheel of our intellects and we become potential inmates for asylums the rest of our lives. No, not one of us knows when the world will cease to be a normal, ordinary place. You know, no one ever knows when he goes insane: He supposes it is the world altering, not himself. Rooms become peopled with strange shapes and beings, sounds distort themselves into awful cries and, poof! we are judged insane.''Poof -' said Jacob, feeling weak and ill.("He Didn't Like Cats")

Even as a child the glimpse of what a normal life would have been was always beyond my vision and my grasp. No matter what I glimpsed - whether hope or warning, happiness or sadness - it all led to the same present, to me being numb.I have been formed by the events of my life and the people involved. The loss of my innocence; the watchful, paranoid eye of my mother; the rejection of the adults around me; my abusive ex-boyfriend; the ignorance of my peers; I’ve allowed all of them to shape me into this faceless, identity-less mass which in my mind, I’ve been all my life.I repress my feelings for personal autonomy by dropping them into the fathomless waters of my subconscious. Trapped behind a colossal wall made from the pain and repressed emotions of my life, I seem to search desperately for anything that will help me reconnect with the world I’ve just left behind, whether it be a way out or simply a person on the other side willing to listen. My cry for someone to feel and touch me are all the more paradoxical considering that those are the very things I am unable to do in my life. I’ve built this wall out of the fear of feeling something, and out of my paranoia of being emotionally touched and leaving myself vulnerable.I want to regress back to my childhood, back to where it all began, so that I might be able to start over and see where things went wrong. For me to progress, I must comprehend the people, the events, and most importantly the decisions that have lead to my current imprisonment behind this wall.The violent battle of selves continues inside me, and they’re forming my most deranged persona yet.

I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?

I have many lovers.Where ever I look, I find them.There is no place devoid of them.They are everywhere:In the enchanting Cottonwood trees,The rivers, the rocky roads, the hills, the mystic trails,The snow capped mountains,The skies, the clouds, the soaring Eagles,The blackness of night, as black as the Raven,The absolute brave Cactus,Listening to me, and the whispers I breathe.Where ever I, look I find them.There is no place devoid of them.My lovers are everywhere.They are everywhere:In the rains, the freezing winds,The sun, the moonlight,The darkness of despair,The days of pain and sorrow,They never leave me, or betray me,Or ever forsake me,Even in my unfaithfulness,They remain mine.Am I blessed, crazy, or blind?However much I dare,Even in those careless moments; they care.Where ever I look, I find them,There is no place devoid of them,My lovers are everywhere.They are everywhere:I close my eye’s, I see them,They appear to me patiently,like some ancient melody,in my waking dreams, they are like wise prophets,twirling in compassionate dances of forgiveness.Allowing me my mistakes of existence,They give me, ‘me’,Reach for my fears, cradle and hold me.They are everywhere.I will regenerate,and shine through their presence.Through their guidance, from their quiet empowerment,I will gather myself, pick up my pride,Understand ‘life’, and remember reality.Finally, when my ‘being’ remains not with me,they will once again redefine, re-collect me,recreate the aura around me,find another place to replant me.They are everywhere.No place is devoid of them.Countless lovers.Their love: Omnipresent.Only if one can ‘see’,These lovers are everywhere .

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale."George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . .PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . .So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.

My friends, it has often been said that I like war... My friends, I don't like war... No, friends, I love war! I love holocausts. I love blitzkriegs. I love defensive lines. I love sieges, charges, I love mop-up operations, and retreats.Wars across prairies, in streets, in trenches, in grasslands, in frozen tundras, through deserts, on the sea, in the air, I love every act of war that can occur upon this earth.I love blasting the enemy to smithereens with artillery salvos that thunder across the lines of battle. My heart leaps with joy whenever a soldier is tossed high into the air or cut to pieces by well placed sniper rounds. And there is nothing like a tank operator using a Tiger 88 to destroy enemy tanks. And the feeling that comes when a soldier runs screaming from his blazing tank only to be mowed down by heavy machine gun fire, is such an exquisite feeling.Like when ranks of infantry brandish their bayonets rushing into the enemy line. It moves me deep within my heart to watch a fresh recruit stabbing over and over into the bloated chest of a long-dead enemy.The sight of deserters being strung up from a street lamp is an irresistible pleasure. And there is nothing more arousing, than the sounds made by prisoners of war dropping like flies, screaming in agony as they're mowed down by ear piercing machine guns!When a band of pitiful resistance fighters makes their final stand with nothing but small arms, only to have their city smashed to atoms block by block by 4.8 ton bombshells, I'm in ecstasy.I love it when my forces are ravaged by a Russian armored division. It's so sad to see towns and villages that were supposed to be defended at all costs, being laid to waste, their women and children being raped, and killed.We are but a single battalion... The remnants of a defeated army numbering less than a thousand strong. However, I believe that each of you warriors is equal to a thousand of their sickly soft children! We represent a force that could easily defeat an army of a million and one men! It is time for us to awake the ones who sent us screaming into oblivion.Let's drag them out of bed by the hair, and remind them of what we are! We will remind them of what it feels like to live in fear. We will remind them of the sound our jackboots make against their throats. We will remind them, that there are more things between Heaven and Hell than are dreamt of in their philosophy.