Among the Mad Quotes

“And there's a thin line between genius and insanity, isn't there?”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Suffice it to say that we only answer questions when the person asking has a lot of silver on the epaulettes, or around the peak of his cap.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“…we saw a lion take down a gazelle – I mean at close quarters. It quite took my breath away. It was as if something happened to the gazelle at the moment of capture, something awe-inspiringly terrible and wonderful at the same time – as if, in knowing the gazelle was to die a dreadful death, ripped apart by the jaws of the lion, the Creator had given the captive a reprieve by taking her soul before she was dead, so that no pain would be felt because the essence had gone already… And I saw the eyes of the gazelle again in France [during WWI], and it struck me that perhaps a heartsick God had looked down and taken up a soul, leaving only the shell of a man.” [of those who developed PTSD and/or “war neuroses”]”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“She thought the flat would be all the better for some photographs, not only to serve as reminders of those who were loved, or reflections of happy times spent in company, but to act as mirrors, where she might see the affection with which she was held by those dear to her.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it. But we hae meat, and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“And that’s what we are all looking for, isn’t it? A home. We’re looking for where we belong.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“... I think it's best if I reserve judgement on the perpetrator of this crime. If I jump to conclusions too soon, I might well blind myself to the right path when it's in front of me.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“A short time ago death was the cruel stranger, the visitor with
the flannel footsteps . . . today it is the mad dog in the house. One eats, one drinks beside the dead, one sleeps in the midst of
the dying, one laughs and sings in the company of corpses. —GEORGES DUHAMEL,
French doctor serving at Verdun in the Great War”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“AMONG THE MAD”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“knew only too well that the path of grief could not be scripted.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“As sometimes happened following a visit to Kent, the city had a chill to it that went beyond a sense of the air outside. Though Maisie loved her flat in Pimlico, there was a warmth to her father's cottage, to being at Chelstone, that made her feel cocooned and safe. And she felt wanted. That flat was hers to do with as she wished, and to do exactly as she pleased within those walls, but sometimes she felt it still held within it the stark just-moved-in feeling that signaled the difference between a house and a home. Of course, it still was not fully furnished, and there were no ornaments displayed - a vase, perhaps, that a visitor might comment upon and the hostess would say, "Oh, that was a gift, let me tell you about it..." There were no stories attached to the flat - but how could there be, when she was always alone in her home. There were no family photographs, no small framed portraits on the mantelpiece over the fire in the sitting room as there were at her father's house. She thought the flat would be all the better for some photographs, not only to serve as reminders of those who were loved, or reflections of happy times spent in company, but to act as mirrors, where she might see the affection with which she was held by those dear to her. A mirror in which she could see her connections.
...
Most of the time, thought, she was not lonely, just on her own, an unmarried woman of independent means, even when the extent of the means - or lack thereof - sometimes gave her cause to remain awake at night. She knew the worries that came to the fore at night were the ones you had to pay attention to, for they blurred reasoned thought, sucked clarity from any consideration of one's situation, and could lead a mind around in circles, leaving one drained and ill-tempered. And if there was no one close with whom to discuss those concerns, they grew in importance in the imagination, whether were rooted in good sense or not.
...
She wondered if one could take leave of one's senses, even if one had no previous occasions of mental incapacity, simply by being isolated from others. Is that what pushed the man over the edge of all measured thought? Were his thoughts so distilled, without the calibrating effect of a normal life led among others, that he ceased to recognize the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, or between having a voice and losing it? And if that were so, might an ordinary woman living alone with her memories, with her work, with the walls of her flat drawing in upon her, be at some risk of not seeing the world as it is?”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Now, according to Dr. Lawrence, there were about sixty, seventy, eighty thousand men who suffered some sort of war neuroses—shell-shock—to a greater or lesser degree. And if you listen to Lawrence for long enough, he’ll tell you how that number has been massaged since 1915—first, to put the lid on a syndrome that few understood, and secondly to limit damage to the exchequer from a never-ending pensions liability. Lawrence says that some two hundred thousand men are alive today who were shell-shocked, and if you agree that anyone who served has sustained a psychological wound of some description, then you are looking at more than just a few time bombs.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“resembled photographs she had seen of Rudyard Kipling, when the newspapers published photographs of the author and his wife visiting the battlefields of northern France in search of their only son’s final resting place.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Thank you.” She began to butter the bread, placed a sliver of cheese on top, and continued. “Apparently he referred to himself as a ‘foundling.’ The term is a bit old-fashioned, and was enough to pique my interest. I remembered the Foundling Hospital, the one built by Thomas Coram in the 1700s. It only moved out of London about four or five years ago, and now it’s in Redhill.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“In my estimation—and I could be taken to task by the authorities for such comments, so please reflect upon this conversation with care—the numbers of shell-shocked men ran into the hundreds of thousands. And, arguably, there is no man”—he held Maisie’s eyes with his own—“or woman, who returned from Flanders unscathed in the mind.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Though there was the occasional supper engagement, so often her evenings were spent alone, her staple diet being the large pan of soup she made at the beginning of the week. And later, as she donned her flannel pajamas and pulled a pillow”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“but remember that each day you are weaving a memory. Make sure you don’t look back at these times through a veil of tears.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“You know, Maisie, that when you look at one of these politicians, you’re looking at a thief, a liar and a murderer, that’s the way I see it.” “Come on, Dad, that’s not like you.” “No, I mean it. Look—they take our money, they lie through their teeth, and then they send our boys off to their deaths, don’t they? And all the time, they’re in clover, never a day’s risk or a day wanting.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister was the illegitimate son of a maidservant, who as a young man had taken it upon himself to continue his education after leaving school at the age of twelve. Ramsey MacDonald”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Number Ten Downing Street.” “Oh, good lord!” “No, I would say the Right Honourable Gentleman has never been that good, not with the mess this country’s in,”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“there’s more crooks over there in Westminster than there are lurking down the Mile End Road—”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“work in tandem—and that means we pedal in different directions, most”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“She knew the worries that came to the fore at night were the ones you had to pay attention to, for they blurred reasoned thought, sucked clarity from any consideration of one’s situation, and could lead a mind around in circles, leaving one drained and ill-tempered. And if there was no one close with whom to discuss those concerns, they grew in importance in the imagination, whether they were rooted in good sense or not.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“And I saw the eyes of the gazelle again in France [during WWI], and it struck me that perhaps a heartsick God had looked down and taken up a soul, leaving only the shell of a man.” [of those who developed PTSD and/or “war neuroses”]… [In becoming a psychiatrist] I was really trying to create the conditions whereby a soul might be persuaded to join a man’s body once a again, thus making him whole.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“There's only one thing left to do. St. Paul's on Old Year's Night. For Auld Lang Syne, my dears. For old time's sake.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Thus he always wrote using a pencil with a long, sharp but soft lead, so he couldn't here his words as they formed on the page.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad