No one had spoken of hope. The feeling was of living death – or worse, of never having been fully alive and knowing. Souls withered from the beginning, and doomed to stare into the time and space of every day.

As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other’s hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.

from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye;

to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been

What’s right? Ironic that all my intelligence doesn’t help me solve a problem like this.

‘I think I’ve changed during these weeks away from the lab,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t see how to do it at first, but tonight, while I was wandering around the city, it came to me. The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems

How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes – how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to remember that not too long ago I – like this boy – had foolishly played the clown.

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?

So this is how a person can come to despise himself – knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.