The Asylum Quotes

“The fever returned that night, and for days, perhaps weeks—I lost all track of time—I burned, or shivered, or lay in a drugged stupor, through which an endless procession of faces came and went. Some no doubt were real; others, like Aunt Vida’s—or Hodges’—could only be hallucinations, but all seemed equally phantasmal. I would wake from dreams so terrible that it was a relief to find myself back in the infirmary, until I remembered why I was there, and then the waking nightmare would begin again. And yet a small part of my mind—my last and only refuge—went on insisting that it was all a dream: that if I could only endure for long enough, I was bound to wake in my bed”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“At times his mind would race beyond control, whirling from one dreadful prospect to the next, all fraught with the most hideous anxiety; then his thoughts would slow until to think at all was like trying to wade through quicksand, and he would sink into a lethargy so profound that even to leave his bed seemed an intolerable effort. And over all was cast a leaden blackness of spirit, a thing worse than the worst pain he had ever experienced, because it consumed his entire being, suffocating all joy and hope as if he were being smothered by ashes.”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“Yours is a loving spirit; it should not die with you”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“the feeling that I was becoming no one at all”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“I came to realise that my life, which had seemed so unmistakably real, consisted only of memories”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“How could I be sure that I was not insane? I did not feel mad, but how was I to know what madness felt like?”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“is like a leaden blanket of darkness—darkness and fear, because you are possessed by dread: a universal dread that clamps like a limpet onto every passing thought. In the depths of an attack, I wake each morning feeling as if I have committed a capital crime and been sentenced to hang. The overwhelming temptation is to seek oblivion, and at the worst, the thought of the ultimate oblivion is always with you.”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“we no longer believe in God, but hope nevertheless for miracles—though”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“- I feel entirely content, sitting here with you.”
― John Harwood, The Asylum

“a trance of desolation”
― John Harwood, The Asylum