Mark Vonnegut · 301 pages
Rating: (2.8K votes)
“Knowing that you're crazy doesn't make the crazy things stop happening.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“Having their feelings make sense is how people get their kicks.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“I often took him as one of God's little jokes on me. When I was in desperate trouble, what saved me from a fate worse than death? To what do I owe my life? Was it love, affection, understanding, friends, wisdom? No no no. It was a man who looks like a poor copy of Walt Disney, drives pink Cadillacs, wears baby-blue alligator shoes, and appears to have the emotional depth of a slightly retarded potato.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“After my first few tastes I was pretty much hooked. I'd have dry spells, months without any or only piddling amounts of grace, but I never forgot about it or stopped wanting it.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“The first meeting I really remember with the good doctor was when I was starting to be able to speak English again and making a brave attempt to regain some of my dignity. Trying to be very sane, I went up to him and asked if he was my doctor. He said he didn't think so.
"You're Dr. Dale, aren't you?"
"Why, Mark, of course. I didn't recognize you with clothes on." He had a talent for saying just the right thing.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“I’m willing to make sense as soon as the rest of the world does.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“I was back to being polite, the well-tempered paranoid. I didn't have much of a choice. If I wasn't polite, they could stick me with those needles or put me back in that little room or take away my visitor privileges or any number of other things. Besides, there didn't seem to be any urgency or anything to be gained by not being polite, the way there had been before. So I was polite. There was time.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“I’m subject to occasional theological nightmares. The one that leaves me in a cold sweat every time is, I arrive at the pearly gates and the first thing I’m asked is where I went to college.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“The Doc. Virginia and Simon had told me that Dr. Dale was my doctor. I have a fuzzy recollection of walking up to some doctor-looking person and being totally absorbed by his gold tie clip. I suspected it was the button to end the world so I didn't touch it. I'm pretty sure it was Dr. Dale. I don't know who else would be so tasteless as to walk around a mental hospital wearing the button to end the world.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“But my biggest joy and best education and proudest achievement has been being able to show up for work and life and not cause too much trouble a day at a time in spite of my hysterical, somewhat dramatic, nature.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“At the time I would have endorsed the radical notions of R. D. Laing that insanity was a sane reaction to an insane society. Leaving the insane society to set up an independent self-sufficient commune seemed like a very sensible noble brave thing to do—plus it figured to be good for my mental health. Had I gone crazy in Boston or New York I would have blamed my culture and society without a second thought. The arguments were all packed, polished, and ready to fly.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“Looking at mental health problems the same way we look at other medical problems is factually correct—the best bet for reducing the disabling symptoms and the only way to lessen the stigma and blame that traditionally double or triple the pain.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“Having rationally decided to become less rational, we hoped to find new, meaningful, exciting, useful truths. Folk”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“Maybe just being open to things being connected made us see more. Now I shudder whenever I find that sort of connectedness creeping into my life.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“In a funny way it's almost fun, having everything be so fucked up and managing to adjust. I guess you might say I'm proud. Proud of me, proud of my friends for managing to deal with this thing so well. For most people this would be the end of the world. They'd panic, their friends would panic. Things would get trampled in the stampede. But we've kept our heads, made the necessary allowances, ad can just ride this thing out.
I'm pretty much just putting in time waiting for this cloud to blow over. Waiting for something to come along to make some sense out of all this. Killing time, waiting for some sort of cavalry to come over the hill. There's really not an awful lot I can do but wait. As long as there's no panic, we can hold out for damn near forever.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“In my more lucid moments I realized that insanity was a fairly reasonable explanation for what was happening to me. The problem was that it wasn't useful information. Realizing I was crazy didn't make the crazy stuff stop happening. Nor did it give me any clues about what I should do next.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“For me to have sat around calling the crazy stuff "crazy" would have been the most wasteful, unimaginative thing I could have done. There were so many much better things to do with it.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
“I was back to being polite, the well-tempered paranoid. I didn't have much choice. If I wasn't polite, they could stick me with those needles or put me back in that little room or take away my visitor privileges or any number of other things. Besides, there didn't seem any urgency or anything to be gained by not being polite, the way there had been before. So I was polite. There was time.”
― Mark Vonnegut, quote from The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
Mark Vonnegut
See more on GoodReads
“When I got the tattoo, I knew I was drawing a crooked line between myself and society.”
― Warren Ellis, quote from Crooked Little Vein
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, quote from The Essential Groucho: Writings By, For, and about Groucho Marx
“Every person makes a difference. And the choices we make, the things we do—they matter.” She looked up into Will’s eyes. “And now I do believe in fate. Especially the kind we make ourselves.”
― Maurissa Guibord, quote from Warped
“An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Space
“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
Doctor Zhivago
Mockingjay
Like Water for Choco...
Steppenwolf
The Amber Spyglass
Breakfast at Tiffany...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
