Daniel Keyes Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out forthemselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of writtencommunication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less-filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about." --Charlie Gordan”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: 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.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“The path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“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 the most.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“The answer can't be found in books - or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you - feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you've got to learn to trust yourself”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I can't afford to spend my time with anyone - there's only enough left for myself”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“The only question now is: How much can I hang on to?”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other - child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway towards the goal-box of solitary death.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Im like a man whos been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Because I want to see. I've got to know what's going to happen while I'm still enough in control to be able to do something about it.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“Here look at me. I'm Charlie, the son you wrote off the books? Not that I blame you for it, but here I am, all fixed up better than ever. Test me. Ask me questions. I speak twenty languages, living and dead; I'm a mathematical whiz, and I'm writing a piano concerto that will make them remember me long after I'm gone.”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I may not have all the time I thought I had...”
-- Daniel Keyes -
“I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs.”
-- Daniel Keyes
