Daniel Keyes Quotes

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.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here.

Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.

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

There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.

Thank God for books and music and things I can think about." --Charlie Gordan

I can't afford to spend my time with anyone - there's only enough left for myself

People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.

Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.

Punctuation, is? fun!

What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute - and still eagerly sanding benches.

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.

The only question now is: How much can I hang on to?

Why am I always looking at life through a window?

A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.

Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you.

If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.

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.

I was her bestist pupil in the Beckman School for retarted adults and I tryed the hardist becus I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men." --Charlie Gordan

And now - Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: '...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.

No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the backyard. I cried.

There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin." --Charlie Gordan

Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.

I may not have all the time I thought I had.

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?

Im like a man whos been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.

I pray God it is the answer I want, but if not I will accept any answer at all and try to be grateful for what I had.

ARTIFICIALLY-INDUCED INTELLIGENCE DETERIORATES AT A RATE OF TIME DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE QUANTITY OF THE INCREASE.

The world around me and my past seem far away and distorted, as if time and space were taffy being stretched and looped and twisted out of shape.

It doesn't mean, ' she shrugged. 'It just is

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men."--Charlie Gordan

Shut up!Leave him alone! He cant understand. He cant help what he is ... but for God's sake, have some respect! He's a human being!

It's a strange sensation to pick up a book you read and enjoyed just a few months ago and discover you don't remember it.

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.

I was afraid it would come to this, but I have no patience with her now. I'm jealous of every moment away from the work - impatient with any one who tries to steal my time.

Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up to my pores during the day, and at night - in the moments before I pass off into sleep - ideas explode into my head like fireworks.

I am in love with what I am doing, because the answer to this problem is right here in my mind, and soon - very soon - it will burst into consciousness.

Thank God for books and music and things I can think about.

I thought: 'My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love.' And then I wondered: 'What would happen if it were possible to increase a person's intelligence?'

This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy. And now that I've found it, how can I give it up? Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.

How many great men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?

I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of frends who like me.

That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

I am just as far away from Alice with an I.Q. of 185 as I was when I had an I.Q. of 70. And this time we both know it.

By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours. We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling… But a world without feeling is a world without pain.