Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me.

Friends are the fruitcake of life - some nutty, some soaked in alcohol, some sweet.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.

Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.

It's not a good idea to define the boundaries of normality by tearing apart people who are outside of it.