Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.

If you follow the pescribed way of how people want you to be, then it will be of great relieve if you commit suicide than to be dragged along like a donkey.

If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us.

When a mad man found some certain way to express his insanity in original way, he would get promoted to be called an Artist.... Wait, are you talking about me?

[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.

As long as he deceived himself about the truth, he could blame fortune and have confidence in the future. Now the clouds of madness were closing round his mind.

Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.

The stupidity of gossips is that they become frightened when they see your face, and a little word from your mouth makes them vibrate like an electrocuted criminal.

I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

When your head is about to explode, you shouldn't dare call in a psychiatrist because you're about bringing new ideas to world that will later label you a freak.

All I have to do is set the power free. Escape the chains of humanity, let madness be my guide. If I forget everything but Wonderland, I can become beautiful pandemonium.

Aucun des sophismes de la folie, - la folie qu'on enferme, - n'a été oublié par moi : je pourrais les redire tous, je tiens le système.