“I can understand why magicians have such a high insanity rate. We don’t end well, most of us, it has to be said.”

— Alan Moore

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: I can understand why magicians have such a high insanity rate. We don’t end well, most of us, it has to be said. Paul Daniels might escape the worst effects, but the rest of us are pretty obviously doomed. Once you step over that line, you are in danger from a lot of stuff. Delusion, obviously, being the main thing.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I can understand why magicians have such a high insanity rate. We don’t end well, most of us, it has to be said." by Alan Moore?

Alan Moore 274

English writer primarily known for his work in comic books 1953

Related quotes

“I don't understand poetry. We studied it in high school and college, but they never told us why it was good.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Quotes from interviews, Insider Audio interview (1997)
Context: I don't appreciate poetry--I don't mind admitting that now, I don't understand poetry. We studied it in high school and college, but they never told us why it was good. I got A's on all the exams--"Hail to thee blithe spirit, bird thou never wert"-- what the hell does that mean? I have no idea.

““Wow,” Sue said. “You actually stole this?”
“We don’t use that word,” Elaine told her. “Chris has an unnamed high-level source.””

Robert Charles Wilson book Blind Lake

Source: Blind Lake (2003), Chapter 20 (p. 238)

““We have a war to fight. You don’t understand. We fight in God’s name.”
“I understand just fine,” Nyx said.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 32 (p. 235).

“That’s why love stories don’t have endings! They don’t have endings because love doesn’t end.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“The schizophrenic is probably having exactly the same experience as the magician but has no context in which to understand it.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The schizophrenic has had their window kicked in, the magician has got a body of law – probably most of it bollocks, it doesn’t matter. The magician’s got a system into which the alien information that will be pouring into him or her will be fitted. They’ve got a filing cabinet, like the Qabalah, which is a filing cabinet for ideas. It divides the whole universe up into ten drawers. Any experience can be passed into one of the drawers. The schizophrenic is probably having exactly the same experience as the magician but has no context in which to understand it. … The schizophrenics I have known, the most evident thing about it is the interconnectedness of everything. That’s standard lunacy, it’s also standard magic. But with one of them, it is uncontrollable, you are lost in a world in which everything is obviously connected by symbolic threads. That is what the magician is seeking, to see these threads that connect things up. If you’ve got a system – even if it’s a completely made-up bogus system – then you’ve at least got a filing cabinet to sort this stuff into, you don’t have to get crushed under it.

“When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 7

“I can well understand why children love sand.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Although this quote has been attributed to Wittgenstein in Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, there is no verifiable source from Wittgenstein that it can be traced back to.
Disputed

“Yeah, well, it’s what happens when we spoil the things we love. They don’t always understand the boundaries and their ridiculous wants can get us killed if we’re not careful. (Jaden)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“We can not gaze into space and understand that space has no end. There is no brick wall at the end of space, because if there was, what would be behind the brick wall? It just goes on and on……never ending. The thought of infinity hurts my brain – I can not understand it. The Bible teaches us that God is eternal, without beginning and without end. We being finite, can not understand a world without time. Time is just a dimension that God has created and subjected man to Eternity and infinity are too much for our tiny brains to comprehend.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

“I can understand why magicians have such a high insanity rate. We don’t end well, most of us, it has to be said.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Alan Moore 274

Related quotes

Related topics