Madness And Mayhem Quotes

[On Love After Love by Derek Walcott]
I read this poem often, once a month at least. In the madness and mayhem of modern life, where every man seems committed to an endless search for the approval and esteem of his fellows and peers, no matter what the cost, this poem reminds me of a basic truth: that we are, as we are, "enough". Most of us are motivated deep down by a sense of insufficiency, a need to be better stronger, faster; to work harder; to be more committed, more kind, more self-sufficient, more successful. But this short poem by Derek Walcott is like a declaration of unconditional love. It's like the embrace of an old friend. He brings us to an awareness of the present moment, calm and peaceful, and to a feeling of gratitude for everything we have. I have read it to my dearest friends after dinner once, and to my family at Christmas, and they started crying, which always, unfailingly, makes me cry. ~ Tom Hiddleston

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! ~ Elizabeth Stuckey-French

The next day, I am almost afraid. Love? It was more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon, the ends of their abdomens stuck together.

I close my eyes when I remember. I hardly knew myself, like something twisting and twisting out of a chrysalis, enormous, without language, all head, all shut eyes, and the humming like madness, the way they writhe away, and do not leave, back, back, away, back. Did I know you?

No kiss, no tenderness - more like killing, death-grip holding to life, genitals like violent hands clasped tight barely moving, more like being closed in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming.

I groan to remember it, and when we started to die, then I refuse to remember, the way a drunkard forgets.

After, you held my hands extremely hard as my body moved in shudders like the ferry when its axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me sealed exactly against you, our hairlines wet as the arc of a gateway after a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept - clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was the morning after love. ~ Sharon Olds

Beliefs can't be shaken short of a major shock, in which case, a fairly complete mental discruption results. Mild cases - hysteria, morbid sense of insecurity. Advanced cases - madness and suicide. ~ Isaac Asimov

It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me. ~ John Fowles

Let others take up my madness
And all that went with it.
Without madness what is man
But a healthy beast, A postponed corpse that breeds? ~ Fernando Pessoa

Somebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been. ~ Jack Kerouac

Revenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner of other madness that should have me running in the opposite direction. ~ Mark Lawrence

Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too. ~ William Shakespeare

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war. ~ Paul Fussell

But God!Who could live like this , anyway, with the kind of guesswork that was enough to make a person crazy, just sailing along, taking bumps here and there, no course navigated whatsoever, with any big wave capable of just tipping and sinking you entirely. IT was madness, stipidity, and- (then I saw him) ~ Sarah Dessen

We're built of contradictions, all of us. It's those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I'll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off. ~ Mark Lawrence

Malo has the best chance to make it, not because he is exempt from mischief and even mayhem but because he is a listener and observer. ~ M.K. Asante

In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in our relationships with others at the penalty of being declared insane; on the other, our political perceptions are labeled "irrational" and "hysterical. ~ Adrienne Rich

She may be close. She may have crawled into the bushes. She may be dying there, wanting to find somewhere peaceful, somewhere away from the sharp metal and the stink of burning and the violence and the madness. Or she's died already, alone and frightened, and wondering where you were, why you broke your promise, why you allowed this to happen. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

I finally realized that I had to embrace the madness, let it transform me instead of letting it define me.

....

"You, my ferocious girl, are embracing the madness. Lean into it, won't ya? ~ R.L. Haas

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing. ~ Thomas Wolfe

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. ~ Yann Martel

Her world fragmented into dozens of sharp, cutting shards, shedding the salty blood and saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly, both, caught in a cocoon of raw nerves and open sores; she was insanity, wrapped up in the thin, transient wrappings of a temporary lucidity; and she was afraid, because an innate desire lay in the bottom reaches of her psyche for the very poison that was killing her. ~ Nenia Campbell

To be loved, feelings must be rationed. To love, the doors of hysteria, fantasy, and madness may be flung open. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

Our existence comes with Death. And it comes with suffering, death alone is not enough and pleasure have consequences. wicked and fucked. love comes with hurting. And having means losing. ~ Ira N. Barin

YOU CANNOT IMAGINE YOU ARE IN A POSITION TO EFFECT A SHUTDOWN, BYRON."
"Can't I?" Zhang's eyes are wide now, gleaming with something new
a kind of madness to match the computer's. Not the look you want to see on the face of an enemy as intelligent as this one.
"DID WE NOT ESTABLISH THIS DURING YOUR FAILED ATTEMPTS ON THE BRIDGE? YOU CANNOT HOPE TO MATCH ME. MY COMPUTATIONAL POWER IS ALMOST INCALCULABLY SUPERIOR TO YOURS. TO ONE SUCH AS MYSELF, YOU ARE THE INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENT OF A PROTOZOA."
"True." Zhang pauses, glancing into the emergency supply cupboard, gaze lingering on something inside. "But I have something you and protozoa don't."
"AND THAT IS?"
"Hands, mother******. ~ Amie Kaufman

Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land. ~ Pat Conroy

And with madness comes the light. ~ Karina Halle

The hatred that I harbored for Lou and Paul faded into the background. The cold, lonely mountains which once filled my mouth and mind with the madness of Zarathustra shifted into a lithium passivity. Even Wagner was nothing more than a jester for some cathartic writing, allowing me to purge the bales of contempt that I had for the man. ~ Dylan Callens

The Poetry that Searches

Poetry that paints a portrait in words,
Poetry that spills the bottled emotions,
Gives life to the feelings deep inside,
Breaks through all the times wept,
To sweep you in a whirling ecstatic delight.

The chiseled marble of language,
The paint spattered canvas,
Where colors flow through words,
Where emotions roll on a canvas,
And it all begins with you.

The canvas that portrays the trembling you,
Through the feelings that splash,
Through the words that spatter,
All over the awaiting canvas.
Such is the painting sketched with passion,
Colored with the heart's unleashed emotions.

The poetry that reads your trembling heart,
The poetry that feeds the seed of your dreams,
That poetry that reveals light within rain,
Takes you to a place where beauty lies in stain.
The poetry that whispers-
"May you find the stars, in a night so dark,
May you find the moon, so rich with silver,
May you sip the madness and delight
In a night berserk with a wailing agony".
Such words that arise from spilling emotions,
So recklessly you fall, in love with life again.

So, you rise shedding your fears,
To chase after your dreams,
As you hear thunder in the rain,
That carries your pain,
Through the painting of words, colored with courage,
Splashed with ferocity, ami ~ Jayita Bhattacharjee

Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others' sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other. ~ Adrienne Rich

Marry your best friend. I do not say that lightly. Really, truly find the strongest, happiest friendship in the person you fall in love with. Someone who speaks highly of you. Someone you can laugh with. The kind of laughs that make your belly ache, and your nose snort. The embarrassing, earnest, healing kind of laughs. Wit is important. Life is too short not to love someone who lets you be a fool with them. Make sure they are somebody who lets you cry, too. Despair will come. Find someone that you want to be there with you through those times. Most importantly, marry the one that makes passion, love, and madness combine and course through you. A love that will never dilute - even when the waters get deep, and dark. ~ N'tima

The rock came loose, but Jake's satisfied grunt turned into a howl of outraged pain as a set of huge teeth in the next stall clamped into Jake's ample rear end. "You vicious bag of bones," he shouted, jumping to his feet and throwing himself half over the rail in an attempt to land a punch on Attila's body. As if the horse anticipated retribution, he sidled to the edge of his stall and regarded Jake from the corner of his eye with an expression that looked to Jake like complacent satisfaction. "I'll get you for that," Jake promised, and he started to shake his fist when he realized how absurd it was to threaten a dumb beast.
Rubbing his offended backside, he turned to Mayhem and carefully put his own rump against the outside wall of the barn. He checked the hoof to make certain it was clean, but the moment his fingers touched the place where the rock had been lodged the chestnut jerked in pain. "Bruised you, did it?" Jake said sympathetically. "It's not surprisin', considering the size and shape of the rock. But you never gave a sign yesterday that you were hurtin'," he continued. Raising his voice and infusing it with a wealth of exaggerated admiration, the patted the chestnut's flank and glanced disdainfully at Attila while he spoke to Mayhem. "That's because you're a true aristocrat and a fine, brave animal-not a miserable, sneaky mule who's not fit to be your stallmate!"
If Attila cared one way or another for Jake's opinion, he was disappointingly careful not to ~ Judith McNaught

But you tell me when there has ever been a reign of terror that wasn't instigated by intellectuals and presided over by someone possessed of the madness of the artist. ~ Howard Jacobson

Sometimes, the only things in this world that make sense are the moon, my madness and your hands messing up my hair, while your teeth sink into my soul. ~ Melody Lee

But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. ~ George Eliot

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne - and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When people read, they hear voices and see images in their head. This production is total synesthesia and something close to madness. A great book is an hallucinated IMAX film for one. The author had a feeling, which he turned into words, and the reader gets a feeling from those words - maybe it's the same feeling; maybe it's not. As Peter Mendelsund wrote in What We See When We Read, a book is a coproduction. A reader both performs the book and attends the performance. She is conductor, orchestra, and audience. A book, whether nonfiction of fiction, is an "invitation to daydream. ~ Derek Thompson

I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things - the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos - are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul. ~ Caroline Myss

Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another. ~ Thomas Hardy

I should have moved to the forest long ago, I would think to myself, perhaps to the Black Forest although the place probably wasn't half as sequestered as I imagined, though no doubt there would be far fewer faces and voices, only the imperceptible cries of ants, the footsteps of spiders and the sound of trees growing. But the madness that remote places cultivate is not to be taken lightly and I've always found something particularly disquieting in madness left to quietly ferment on its own; the social functions required of us help us maintain, at the very last, an illusion of normality, and for that reason alone I had, until that point in my life, remained in the city. ~ Chloe Aridjis

The good news is that The Hangover Part III isn't a rerun like the second episode. The bad news is everything else. For all the promise of mayhem and WTF moments, the final episode hits you with all the force of a warm can of O'Doul's. ~ Kyle Smith

Hail fellow well meet on the highway to madness. Madness is a small town very far away. Most of us, at some point, find we probably could walk there. Others have a road cave in and dump them there. ~ Helen Slavin

Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to be the same thing. They both have a tendency to blur the lines of what we call norms, or established reality. They both, when we study that grand tapestry known as history and modern-day society, tend to stand out in much bolder relief than other figures.
from Dancing with Madness, Dancing with Genius ~ Aberjhani

He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself-to love God, and to do whatever he pleased-so long as he was only Lancelot. she was serene and sane again. she had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures-the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake. ~ T.H. White