Jonathan Franzen Quotes

The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

I don't think any human being/artist is 100% emotionally stable, based on the human condition and our emotions that relate to it.

I think everybody has had emotional distress, but yes, I think I'm pretty stable.

Her sanity was a fragile thing, a butterfly cupped in her hands, that she carried with her everywhere, afraid of what would happen if she let it go-or got careless and crushed it.

I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.

Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.

I am even-tempered and emotionally well balanced

As lives go, I'll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.

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

An unhealthy mind, even in a healthy body, will ultimately destroy health.

I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.

Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.

I think it's probably a good thing to be considered stable, but with a capacity for madness.

We're all not quite as sane as we pretend to be.

The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.

Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.

Sanity brings pain but madness is a vile thing.

A well-balanced mind is the best remedy against affliction.

There is no insanity so devastating in man's life as utter sanity.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

I think I must be worried all the time - maybe that is the other side of joy, you know, holding that line of the full range of emotions.

There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to find a way to ride it out so that they don't wind up needing extra help. So I think that "mental illness," as a term, is garbage. Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something.

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

The key to success is emotional stability.