A Quote by Roland Barthes

Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.

Roland Barthes

Quote Topics

Am Cannot Every Mad Motto Neurotic Reads Sane Thus Writer

Quote Author

Roland Barthes
French - Critic
November 12, 1915 - March 26, 1980

Oh! thou who are greatly mad, deign to spare me who am less mad.

Horace

--Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane. --How must that make them feel? --Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane.

Donald Barthelme

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

Graham Swift

If I am mad, then who on the face of the earth is sane? If you are sane, then there is no madman in the world.

Saib Tabrizi

Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.

Terry Pratchett

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

David Markson

Let the mad find wisdom in their madness for the sane, and let the sane be grateful.

Clive Barker

My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.

Brandon Sanderson

I am tired of the superficial smiles that adorn the many ghouls among us. I am tired of the righteous indignation that hides beneath those visages that feign our best interest and deign to think we cannot and will not stand for ourselves.

Corey Taylor

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

H. P. Lovecraft

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

Akira Kurosawa

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

Akira Kurosawa

The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.