Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.

“The more intelligent you become the more problems you’ll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth.

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?”

But what you did for me—wonderful as it is—doesn’t give you the right to treat me like an experimental animal. I’m an individual now, and so was Charlie before he ever walked into that lab.

intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”

Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that 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.