Daniel Keyes Quotes

“My feeling for you won’t change because I’m becoming intelligent. I’ll only love you more.”

“Just leave me alone. I’m not myself. I’m falling apart, and I don’t want you here.”

“The more intelligent you become, the more problems you’ll have.”

“Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.”

“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?

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

“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.”

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

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

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”

“My feeling for you won’t change because I’m becoming intelligent. I’ll only love you more.”

“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.”

“Although we know the end of the maze holds death (and it is something I have not always known--not long ago the adolescent in me thought death could happen only to other people), I see now that the path I choose through that 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.”

“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 see now that 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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. 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 thought they’d be happy for me. They’re supposed to be my friends.”

“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”

“There are so many doors to open I am impatient to apply my own knowledge and skills to the problem.”

“So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”

“‘I’m not close to him.’ He looked at me defiantly. ‘But he’s put his whole life into this. He’s no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he’s doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he’s just an ordinary man trying to do a great man’s work, while the great men are all busy making bombs.‘”