John Chamberlain Quotes

'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.

I don't know any artists that are really emotionally well adjusted. In fact, I think we're all pretty much insane.

Mental illness and creativity are - it's a thin line in between the two. I tend to believe that.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.

I did have strange ideas during certain periods of time.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.

Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.

I was completely nuts for most of my life.

'An Unquiet Mind' wasn't hard to write in terms of the actual writing of it.

I'm not much crazier than anybody else, but I'm not much saner.

Before I got on full-time medication, I believed that my mental disorder was the reason I could create so much and create well, because it made me crazy. I could go to these dark places and then come out of it and just be human again.

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

Usually, I am a compulsive person, and I need - sometimes urgently - to paint... Painting is close to poetry, is a kind of poetry expressed visually. It has to be spontaneous, rapid - at least in my case.

We all go a little mad sometimes.

I think insanity is the hardest thing to play.

I haven't gone completely insane, but it might happen soon.

I agree with what Mark Twain said - we're all mad at night.

Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy.

I don't think you ever know in yourself whether you have gone mad.