Insanity is a state of mind

So said Alan Alda… Hello, and welcome to this compilation of quotes regarding something that troubles me greatly, the feeling that I am going mad. Why so? Well, thanks to paragraph 5 of the latest post on the Transition Times blog of Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, I now have a reason:

I often feel like Cassandra of Troy, who was able to see disaster in the future of her beloved community, but was under a curse, imposed by the god Apollo, of never being believed or listened to.

This post is also inspired by ‘Playing with words’, on Paul Handover’s Learning from Dogs, which is an amazing collection of unattributed sayings, to which one could very easily add Mark Twain’s, “Denial is a river in Egypt”… OK, so here goes with my compilation of quotes on malady of the mind: I said to my psychiatrist,’I keep thinking I’m a dog’. He told me to get off his couch. (Rodney Dangerfield) I went to my doctor’s and he told me I have acute paranoia. I said, ‘Excuse me but, I’m here to be examined not admired’. (Gracie Allen) I am in therapy now. I used to be in denial. Which is a lot cheaper. (Robin Greenspan) I didn’t have a nervous breakdown. I was clinically fed up for two years. (Alan Partridge) Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. (Anon) In Los Angeles, there’s a hotline for people in denial. So far no one has called. (George Carlin) Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most. (Mark Twain) One out of four people is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three best friends; if they seem all right then you’re the one. (Slappy White). Normal is just a cycle on a washing machine. (Whoopi Goldberg) I once asked Wood Allen how his psychoanalysis was going after 25 years. ‘Slowly’, he said. (John Cleese) I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous. Everyone has not met me yet. (Rodney Dangerfield) I told my psychiatrist I have suicidal tendencies. From now on I have to pay in advance. (Richard Lewis) I went to the doctor the other day and he said I was a paranoid schizophrenic – well, he didn’t actually say it, but we know what he was thinking. (Lily Savage)

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