Angela Grey > Angela's Quotes

“Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

“They are more real than the books on the shelves, books that are sketched with the barest hint of a line here and there, fading in places to a ghostly nothingness. Why recall the picture now, you must be wondering. The reason I remember it so well is that it seems to be an image of the way I have lived my own life. I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I made a resolution to telephone my mother the next day, but it was a safe resolution; no one can hold you to a decision made in middle of the night.And then my spine sent me an alarm. A presence. Here. Now. At my side.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Why should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination as easily as the actual scenery.”
― Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee

“The doctor’s words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live.”
― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

“Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

“Maybe hallucinations are just another reality that we don't see most of the time”
― Lynne Ewing

“I no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t. The lines between reality and delusion had become so blurred.”
― A.B. Shepherd, The Beacon

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."

[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]”
― Franz Kafka

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

“Part of the major problem attending schizophrenia is what it is defined to be, that is, abnormal, rather than an altered state of consciousness that has a specific ecological function for the species. In the West such states are labeled as an illness and are almost always medicated. Most psychoactive drug use is proscribed for exactly the same reason . . . You must not extend perception further than the society wants it to go There are very few people in the West (and virtually none who are clinically schooled) who understand how to train someone in the use of that enhanced perception. Once such gating dynamics are labeled abnormal, accepted to be neuropathological, there is generally no alternative (in that system) except pharmaceutical suppression.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth

“Illness is a reminder that we don’t really have any control. And I understand why people find schizophrenia frightening, believe me, I get it. Hallucinations, delusions, it’s difficult to imagine having a mind that is not fully your own, just like it’s difficult to imagine having cancer, where your body isn’t fully your own. But people living with paranoid type often experience less dysfunction than people living with other subtypes. They’re often able to live, work, and care for themselves. And yet, almost every depiction you find in books or movies make people living with paranoid schizophrenia the villains. Can you imagine if books and movies did the same thing to people with cancer?”
― Penny Reid, Marriage of Inconvenience

“There’s a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life....We who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.”
― Elyn R. Saks

“What’s he doing?” Raine asked. “He’s not talking to me.” “Grab him by the nuts and twist.” I glared at her over my laptop. To us, our characters were real, living, breathing people that sometimes didn’t cooperate. There was a famous quote that being a write was an acceptable form of schizophrenia. It was absolutely true. The voices never stopped, except when they were being jerks.”
― Chelsea M. Cameron, UnWritten

“As I explored my soul, now I know I have survived schizophrenia; hearing voices, reduced social engagement, emotional expression and lack of motivation.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“What I rather wish to say is that the humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not. With proper treatment, someone who is mentally ill can lead a full and rich life. What makes life wonderful--good friends, a satisfying job, loving relationships--is just as valuable for those of us who struggle with schizophrenia as for anyone else.”
― Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

“Let all the dreamers wake the nation.”
― Carly Simon

“To move freely you must be deeply rooted.”
― Bella Lewitzky