Daniel Keyes

The world around me and my past seem far away and distorted, as if time and space were taffy being stretched and looped and twisted out of shape.

ARTIFICIALLY-INDUCED INTELLIGENCE DETERIORATES AT A RATE OF TIME DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE QUANTITY OF THE INCREASE.

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.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

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

This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy. And now that I've found it, how can I give it up? Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.

I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night__n the moments before I pass off into sleep__deas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem. Incredible that anything could happen to take away this bubbling energy, the zest that fills everything I do. It's as if all the knowledge I've soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding. This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy.

How many great men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?

I am in love with what I am doing, because the answer to this problem is right here in my mind, and soon - very soon - it will burst into consciousness.

By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours. We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling_ But a world without feeling is a world without pain.

Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he coulnt lern he wouldnt be able to eat and he would be hungry.

I am just as far away from Alice with an I.Q. of 185 as I was when I had an I.Q. of 70. And this time we both know it.

Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me?

But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.

That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.

I don__ know what__ worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you__e always wanted to be, and feel alone.

Punctuation, is? fun!