Quotes from Daniel Keyes

Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown... the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain. -Charlie Gordon

As I drove out of Warren, I didn't know what to think. The feeling of cold grayness was everywhere around me - a sense of resignation. There had been no talk of rehabilitation, of cure, of someday sending these people out into the world again. No one had spoken of hope. The feeling was of living death - or worse, of never having been fully alive and knowing. Souls withered from the beginning, and doomed to stare into the time and space of every day.

Why is it so important for me to say to her: "Mom, look at me. I'm not retarded any more. I'm normal. Better than normal. I'm a genius?

If I could reach out into the past of my memories, I would make her see how much she was hurting me.

As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.

Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he coulnt lern he wouldnt be able to eat and he would be hungry.

There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem.

Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner

I wasn't his son. That was another Charlie. Intelligence and knowledge had changed me, and he would resent me---as the others from the bakery resented me---because my growth diminished him.

No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

I've got to stop this childish worrying about myself — my past and my future. Let me give something of myself to others.

As long as the writer, or any artist for that matter, keeps his mouth shut, there can be argument and discussion and various interpretations and meanings. But once the writer explains or analyzes, he trivializes his own work.

How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.

And I waited, as a blasphemer waits for lightning. I looked away.

No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery.

This day was good for me. I've got to stop this childish worrying about myself—my past and my future. Let me give something of myself to others. I've got to use my knowledge and skills to work in the field of increasing human intelligence.

man walking on stilts among giants

Ma io so adesso che voi tutti avete trascurato una cosa: l'intelligenza e l'educazione che non siano temperate dall'affetto umano non valgono nulla.

I spend most of my free time at the library now, reading and soaking up what I can from books. I'm not concentrating on anything in particular, just reading a lot of fiction now—Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner—everything I can get my hands on—feeding a hunger that can't be satisfied.

I dedicated my first piano concerto to Fay. She was excited by the idea of having something dedicated to her, but I don't think she really liked it. Just goes to show that you can't have everything you want in one woman. One more argument for polygamy.

Qualquer um pode se sentir inteligente ao lado de um imbecil.

????? IQ-?? ????????? ???? ????????????? ???????? ????????.

He finished shaving me silently, and then brought the sun-tan lamp over to the chair and put cool white pads of cotton soaked in witch hazel over my eyes. There, in the bright red inner darkness I saw what happened the night he took me away from the house for the last time .

ma criança pode não saber como se alimentar, ou o que comer, mas ela conhece a fome.