Quotes from Daniel Keyes

language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway.

I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the backyard. I cried.

The more intelligent you become the more problems you'll have, Charlie.

Dr Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a good motor-vation. I never ever knew I had that. I felt proud when he said that not every body with an eye-q of 68 had that thing. I don't know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too. Algernons motor-vation is the cheese they put in his box. But it cant be that because I didnt eat any cheese last week.

All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body.

I passed your floor on the way up, and now I'm passing it on the way down, and I don't think I'll be taking this elevator again.

Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together. This kind of picture is a lie. Things are forced to fit because the writer or the director or somebody wanted something in that didn't belong. And it doesn't feel right.

I hate that mouse

One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I'm inventing it. I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.

By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours. We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling… But a world without feeling is a world without pain.

The last time we were here," I said, "I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you.

But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are.

Because I want to see. I've got to know what's going to happen while I'm still enough in control to be able to do something about it.

People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem - they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples.

What has happened to me? Why am I so alone in the world?

I was her bestist pupil in the Beckman School for retarted adults and I tryed the hardist becus I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me.

I may not have all the time I thought I had...

When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.

Alice knows everything about me, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.

I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.

Downhill. Thoughts of suicide to stop it all now while I am still in control and aware of the world around me. But then I think of Charlie waiting at the window. His life is not mine to throw away. I've just burrowed it for a while, and now I'm being asked to return it.

I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out for themselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of written communication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less-filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt.

You want these back, don't you? You want me out of here so you can come back and take over where you left off. I don't blame you. It's your body and your brain-and your life, even though you weren't able to make much use of it. I don't have the right to take it away from you. Nobody does. Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?...

That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.