This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled.

There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.

And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range?

Tell me that you don’t take that blade and drag it across your skin and pray for the courage to press down.

An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

Not everything has a happy ending, and not everything has an ending. Some things just kind of dribble away or cut off abruptly.