Quotes from Caleb Carr

Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind. William James, The Principles of Psychology

Imagine, he said, that you enter a large, somewhat crumbling hall that echoes with the sounds of people mumbling and talking repetitively to themselves. All around you these people fall into prostrate positions, some of them weeping. Where are you? Sara's answer was immediate: in an asylum. Perhaps, Kreizler answered, but you could also be in a church. In the one place the behavior would be considered mad; in the other, not only sane, but as respectable as any human activity can be.

We revel in men like Beecham, Moore—they are the easy repositories of all that is dark in our very social world. But the things that helped make Beecham what he was? Those, we tolerate. Those, we even enjoy…

Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be "alienated," not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists.

marks Marcus had originally thought to be left by pitons at that site were therefore made by something else, probably something altogether unconnected to our case).

The fact that you cannot understand it does not mean that it doesn't exist.

She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren't the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told….

Zawsze wydawaÅ'o mi siÄ™, ?e istniejÄ… dwa typy ludzi: ci, którzy podniecajÄ… siÄ™ wszystkim, co wi??? siÄ™ - jak by to uj?? - dziwakami, i ci, których to nie rusza.

underline the notion that the countryside was becoming ever more infected by mankind's petty but brutal desires.

wish that the great wilderness what still dominated up on mountains like the purple Catskills—standing in the distance to my left that afternoon—would

Do you know,' he said quietly. 'I think a baby's hand is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Flashes of silver and brilliantly colored scales caught the light of a few dim worklamps that were on, increasing the eerie impression that the fish were a terrified audience searching for a way out of this place of death and back to those deep, dark regions where men and their brutal ways were unknown.

you cannot objectify the subjective; you cannot generalize the specific.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. —SIR JOHN LUBBOCK THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE AND THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, 1892

It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

Change isn't something that most people enjoy, even if it's progressive change.

You want to believe that there's one relationship in life that's beyond betrayal. A relationship that's beyond that kind of hurt. And there isn't.

She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren't the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told.

It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and temerity to style themselves "New York Society.

It didn't make any more sense to me then than it does now, how life can pile troubles up on a man what don't deserve them, while letting some of the biggest jackasses and scoundrels alive waltz their way through long, untroubled existences.

There's plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can't bear the listening.

Scientists' minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another.

belief that the answers one gives to life's crucial questions are never truly spontaneous; they are the embodiment of years of contextual experience, of the building of patterns in each of our lives that eventually grow to dominate our behavior.