Abnormality Quotes

“I see everything as if in a dark mirror, as if through smoked glass. I view the world in the same way as others look at the Sun in eclipse. Thus I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like the May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It's easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence. I interpret everything as abnormal, terrible and threatening. I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Is deviation from the locally approved norms always and everywhere to be taken as disease?”
― Bernard Wolfe, Limbo

“And suddenly, lying in bed, I became aware of every inch of my body and I apologised to it, quietly. I apologised for bring so ungrateful for so long. Then I thanked my arms, hands and fingers for always trying so hard. I thanked my legs and feet for holding me up all the time. I thanked my brain for working so amazingly well and conjuring up thoughts and dreams and sentences and images and crazy poems. And I thanked all my organs for working together and giving me life. It had taken four and a half billion years for me to be here. Right now. In this universe. And in that moment, I felt totally overwhelmed at being alive. There could be nothing but there was everything. I didn't want to waste a single second more worrying about trivialities. Worrying that I'd never match up to an ideal that didn't even exist. Nobody is normal. We are all different. I had to make sure that every moment I had left on this planet counted.”
― Francesca Martínez

“The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, a priori, abnormal.”
― Karl Menninger

“Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. They sinned grossly; even vilely at times, like lustful beasts—but yet they were normal! And the vilest of them could point a finger of scorn at her, and be loudly applauded.

'God damn them to hell!' she muttered.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“Even the most normal person, if placed in a highly abnormal situation, can be mistakenly perceived as the source of abnormality of the person/circumstance aggregate”
― Rivka Galchen, American Innovations

“I adore the absurd and the abnormal; therefore, that's what I write about. That's what I need to write about. The mainstream has never turned me on.”
― Gerri R. Gray, Gray Skies of Dismal Dreams

“For someone’s ugliness or the congenital abnormality of their body or body part, if we cannot help but laugh, we ought to laugh, not at them, but at Mother Nature.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The Spanish had butchered the Indians with a clean conscience because they were confident that they knew what a normal human being was. Their reason told them it was someone who wore breeches, had one wife, didn’t eat spiders and slept in a bed.”
― Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

“Something she and her husband had in common but rarely discussed was the absence of a desire for children, to fill their home with people besides themselves. It was a silent agreement, felt rather than spoken, and in her experience the soundest agreements were the ones that did not require the reassurances of language. Therefore this line of questioning was the inverse of what she usually fielded, since a childless married woman in her thirties was so often regarded, by men and women alike, as a puzzle or a pity. What's the story here? people would ask, inquests designed to make women like her suspect there was something malformed inside, blinding them to the hideous reality of their choice.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Third Hotel

“When you have inferiority complex, people appear to be mocking you about it. Trying to detach from people won't work. Detach from your own body-mind and identity. It belongs to the universe.”
― Shunya

“No, Mary must not give until she had counted the cost of that gift, until she was restored in body and mind, and was able to form a considered judgment.

Then Stephen must tell her the cruel truth, she must say: 'I am one of those whom God marked on the forehead. Like Cain, I am marked and blemished. If you come to me, Mary, the world will abhor you, will persecute you, will call you unclean. Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond—yet the world will call it unclean. We may harm no living creature by our love; we may grow more perfect in understanding and in charity because of our loving; but all this will not save you from the scourge of a world that will turn away its eyes from your noblest actions, finding only corruption and vileness in you. You will see men and women defiling each other, laying the burden of their sins upon their children. You will see unfaithfulness, lies and deceit among those whom the world views with approbation. You will find that many have grown hard of heart, have grown greedy, selfish, cruel and lustful; and then you will turn to me and will say: "You and I are more worthy of respect than these people. Why does the world persecute us, Stephen?" And I shall answer: "Because in this world there is only toleration for the so-called normal." And when you come to me for protection, I shall say: "I cannot protect you, Mary, the world has deprived me of my right to protect; I am utterly helpless, I can only love you.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“And what of that curious craving for religion which so often went hand in hand with inversion? Many such people were deeply religious, and this surely was one of their bitterest problems. They believed, and believing they craved a blessing on what to some of them seemed very sacred—a faithful and deeply devoted union. But the Church's blessing was not for them. Faithful they might be, leading orderly lives, harming no one, and yet the Church turned away; her blessings were strictly reserved for the normal.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“Ternyata, kebebasan tak bisa membeli makanan dan tak bisa memberiku keteduhan dari terik dan hujan.”
― Adya Pramudita

“Sexual normalcy and abnormality are personal and subjective concepts. What is unnatural to one [person] is natural to another. What is abnormal under certain conditions may be completely normal under others. And, in any event, to be different is not necessarily to be wrong, or to be sick.”
― Victor J. Banis

“Nothing out of place. Normal to the point of abnormal.”
― Fiona Barton, The Widow

“It's good that they couldn't paint you fully with dull colours of normalcy. Some streaks of abnormality, some patches of madness are still visible on you like divine signatures.”
― Shunya

“He was aware that the way things really were was far different than most people believed. The world a wilder, more feral, more abnormal environment than ordinary civilians were able to accept. Ordinary civilians lived in a state of innocence, veiling their eyes against the truth. The world unveiled would scare them, destroy their moral certainties, lead to losses of nerve or retreats into religion or drink.”
― Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“The only tragedy is not being able to conceive of ourselves as tragic. I've always clearly seen that I coexist with the world. I've never clearly felt that I needed to coexist with it. That's why I've never been normal.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Walking down a street I see, in those who pass by me, not the facial expressions that they really have but the expressions that they would have if they knew what I'm like and the kind of life I lead, if my face and my gestures betrayed the shy and ridiculous abnormality of my soul. In eyes that don't even look at me I suspect there are smirks (which I consider only natural) directed at the awkward exception I embody in a world of people who know how to act and to enjoy life; and the passing physiognomies, informed by an awareness that I myself have interposed and superimposed, seem to snicker out loud at my life's timid gesticulations.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Will we make it safely through this upheaval? Will things go back to normal? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope the prognosis for all of us is good. But for now, I’m keeping my head down and doing what is required.

I’m mothering my children. I’m doing my part to hold our home together. I’m reassuring the people I love, and letting them reassure me. It’s remarkable how strong we’ve all become.”
― Tracy K. Smith