Psychotic hallucinations, whether they are visual or vocal, they address you. They accuse you. They seduce you. They humiliate you. They jeer at you. You interact with them.

In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.

My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.

People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.

If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.

Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.

Everyone should keep a dream journal, did you know that?

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

I find I can't get rid of my trashiness as an artist. A lot of my themes in painting, to the extent that there are intentional themes, are meant to bring that conundrum into high relief.

Your body has such a memory.

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act.

From my perspective, the state has to assume responsibility for the integrity of international communications.

Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.

Gotta start teaching the children that they can be just what they want to be, there's much more to life than poverty.