Who's Mad at Whom?

The only people for me are the mad ones — the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous Roman candles.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Before you are frank with another, ask yourself: why? Is it to diminish the other, to make yourself feel better at his expense? The ethical question is to ask: will this foster the relationship? There is always a way to be honest without being brutal.
— Arthur Dobrin

The only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos: the pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write and the lives they lead.
Of all these things, the richest in beauty is a life well lived. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

Malcolm and Huey emerged from the "familiar sights" of the ghetto with their love for and confidence in their people intact. That may seem to be a banal observation, but consider it in light of the contempt which so many white radicals feel toward their people. Hustler, pimp, even servant of the white power structure, no black is diminished for the temporary identity he may have acquired in the ghetto. Black revolutionaries see a man's ghetto function, however compromising, as a flaky shell which can be shed once his underlying needs have been stirred. I think whites have a lot to learn from the revolutionary patience with which the Malcolms and Hueys relate to the deformations of their own people — and more so because, I suspect, the pink white suburban grottos and the black ghettos ultimately have more in common than we imagine.
— David Gelber

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskin or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste.... That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

All writing is garbage.
— Antonin Artaud

A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
— Elbert Hubbard

One madman laughs at another, and they each give enjoyment to one another. If you watch closely, you will see that the maddest one gets the biggest laugh.
— Erasmus