Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

shouldn’t have stayed, but it’s hard to break the habit of listening because people have always spoken and acted as if I weren’t there, as if they never cared what I overheard.

Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.

He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don’t understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn’t realize that I was a person before I came here.

What is my place? Who and what am I now? Am I the sum of my life or only of the past months?

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.

Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all.

“I’ll turn out the lights,” she whispered. “No,” I said, pulling her down onto the couch again. “I want to look at you.”