Elie Wiesel Quotes

Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

--Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane. --How must that make them feel? --Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane.

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

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

I think that I'm so psychotic and so mentally ill that if I could tap into that I could do something really interesting.

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

Sometimes I think that if I wasn't crazy... I'd go crazy.

Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman.

Only the half-mad are wholly alive.

Writers on the subject of August Strindberg have hitherto omitted to mention that he could not write. ... Strindberg, who was neither a good nor a wise man, had a stroke of luck. He went mad. He lost the power of inhibition. Everything down to the pettiest suspicion that the dog had been given the leanest mutton chop, poured out of his lips. Men of his weakness and sensuality are usually, from their sheer brutishness, unable to express themselves. But Strindberg was mad and articulate. That is what makes him immortal.

It is important to remember that at first blush, going sane feels just like going crazy.

The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.

People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

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

Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?

I go through major crises every few months, but then I have great peaks of belief and creativity. I'm a weird kind of animal.

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.

The man who never dreams, goes slowly mad.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.