Quotes from book

Flowers for Algernon

“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.”

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

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”

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

“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.”

“… Don't feel sorry for me. I'm glad I had a second chance in life like you said to be smart because I learned a lot of things that I never knew were in this world, and I'm grateful I saw it even for a little bit.”

“There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin."

--Charlie Gordan”

“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.”

“How can I make him understand that he did not create me?
He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.”

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

“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?”

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

“I’m like a man who’s been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”

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

“The path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”

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

“P. S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”