Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.

The world, in truth, is a wedding.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.