Quotes about madness

„Everything I ever projected New York to be, it was—even the stinky, ratty, vomity part of it. Everybody has to do the subway. Everybody has to smell the same smells. And people get mad all the time. When people don’t like something, like ‘Get out of my way you blah, blah, blah.’ But [in L. A. ] it’s like, ‘How ya doing? Let’s do lunch! I love you!“

—  Jeff Buckley American singer, guitarist and songwriter 1966 - 1997

KCRW – Man In The Moon (January 4, 1994)
From Interviews

„Never allow yourself to become comfortable for that is when fear is guiding your decisions. Confronting fear can be exciting and exhilarating. Let others believe your mad. Only you require truth.“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

1980

„All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.“

—  Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

„If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?“

—  Stephen Crane, book The Open Boat

Pt. VI
The Open Boat (1894)
Source: The Open Boat and Other Stories

„One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.“

—  Aleister Crowley poet, mountaineer, occultist 1875 - 1947

Source: Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4

„Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.“

—  Allen Ginsberg, book Howl and Other Poems

Variant: Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.
Source: Howl and Other Poems

„Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.“

—  Allen Ginsberg American poet 1926 - 1997

„If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!“

—  H.P. Lovecraft, book The Temple

Source: The Temple

„I’m not mad. I’m in a perfectly happy mood, you asshole.“

—  Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

„Let us speak of our madness. We are always being called mad.“

—  Edith Sitwell British poet 1887 - 1964

Yea and Nay : A series of lectures and counter-lectures given at the London school of economics in aid of the hospitals of London (1923) edited by C David Stelling, Section IV, Poetry and Modern Poetry
Context: Let us speak of our madness. We are always being called mad. If we are mad — we and our brothers in America who are walking hand in hand with us in the vanguard of progress — at least we are mad in company with most of our great predecessors and all the most intelligent foreigners. Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth were all mad in turn. We shall be proud to join them in the Asylum to which they are now consigned.

„You're only given a little spark of madness and if you lose that, you're nothing.“

—  Robin Williams American actor and stand-up comedian 1951 - 2014

A Night at the Roxy (1978)

„If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.“

—  Herodotus, book Histories

Book 2, Ch. 173.
The Histories

„Let there be no fainting of heart and no depression, and also let there be no unforeseeing fury, no blindly-striking madness. We are at the beginning of a time of terrible trial. The passage is not to be easy, the crown is not to be cheaply earned. India is going down into the valley of the shadow of death, into a great horror of darkness and suffering. Let us realise that what we are now suffering, is a small part of what we shall have to suffer, and work in that knowledge, with resolution, without hysteria…. The first need at the present moment is courage, a courage which knows not how to flinch or shrink.“

—  Sri Aurobindo Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet 1872 - 1950

Bande Mataram, 1907
India's Rebirth

„My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.“

—  Jack Kerouac American writer 1922 - 1969

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

„People get really mad when you don't let them use you.“

—  Christian Canlubo Filipino Internet Entrepreneur 2002

Source: https://twitter.com/canlubochris/status/1239121399731458048 | Christian Canlubo personal Twitter account

„I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.“

—  S.J. Perelman American humorist, author, and screenwriter 1904 - 1979

"Captain Future, Block That Kick!," The New Yorker (20 January 1940) p. 23 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1940/01/20/captain-future-block-that-kick
Published in book form under the same title in The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. 71

„So you're a tough guy
Like-it-really-rough guy
Just-can't-get-enough guy
Chest-always-so-puffed guy
I'm that bad type
Make-your-mama-sad type
Make-your-girlfriend-mad type
Might-seduce-your-dad type
I'm the bad guy, duh
I'm the bad guy“

—  Billie Eilish American singer-songwriter 2001

"Bad Guy"
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019)

„I have never met a man like my father. He is so mad, terrible and vehement at the same time. Because of him, I never knew anything other than passion. When I began to meet other people I saw that it wasn’t normal.“

—  Nastassja Kinski German actress 1961

Georgina Howell, The Demanding Nastassia Kinski http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1309&dat=19860102&id=MQROAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MJwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6682,494045, New Straits Times, January 2, 1986

„Don't forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across the universe.“

—  Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Mīrābāī, in ” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West”, p. 251