Agneta Jakab > Agneta's Quotes

“Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes its perceptions. To make a new version of the not-entirely-false model, imagine the first interpreter as a foreign correspondent, reporting from the world. The world in this case means everything out- or inside our bodies, including serotonin levels in the brain. The second interpreter is a news analyst, who writes op-ed pieces. They read each other's work. One needs data, the other needs an overview; they influence each other. They get dialogues going.

INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.
INTERPRETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.
INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?
INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.
INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?
INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.
INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.

An exemplary piece of confusion.

INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.
INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.
INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.

Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.
If you are not crazy, the second interpreter's assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter's viewpoint, the tiger theory, will prevail.
The trouble here is that the first interpreter actually sees a tiger. The messages sent between neurons are incorrect somehow. The chemicals triggered are the wrong chemicals, or the impulses are going to the wrong connections. Apparently, this happens often, but the second interpreter jumps in to straighten things out.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco. ”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“Mi se pare că te văd în toate femeile şi nu te aflu în nici una.”
― Mihail Drumeş, Invitaţia la vals

“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“The damaged loves the damaged.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff

“Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“I still love him so much I'll hide any amount of conjugated estrogen in his food. So much I'll do anything to destroy him.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I'm sorry if this all seems a little rushed and desperate. It is.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“Pretty much always. We need to tell the story of our life to someone.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“You have to keep recycling yourself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
― Mineko Iwasaki

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“to love means to realize there is a time to let the beloved one go”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye