Top 100 Daniel Keyes Quotes
#1. Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here.
Daniel Keyes
#2. I am afraid. Not of live, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if it had never been.
Daniel Keyes
#3. It's not love-but she's important to me. I find myself listening for her
footsteps down the hallway whenever she's been out.
Daniel Keyes
#4. I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.
Daniel Keyes
#5. I may not have all the time I thought I had...
Daniel Keyes
#6. It was as if I had been looking at the whole thing clearly on the blackboard of my mind, but when I turned to read it, part of it had been erased and the rest didn't make sense.
Daniel Keyes
#7. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other - child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway towards the goal-box of solitary death.
Daniel Keyes
#8. I was her bestist pupil in the Beckman School for retarted adults and I tryed the hardist becus I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me.
Daniel Keyes
#9. So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.
Daniel Keyes
#10. And he has the teacher's fear of being surpassed by the student, the master's dread of having the disciple discredit his work. (Not that I am in any real sense Nemur's student or disciple as Burt is.) I guess Nemur's fear of being revealed as a man walking on stilts among giants is understandable.
Daniel Keyes
#11. Who's to say death is better than your darkness?
Daniel Keyes
#12. My studies are going well. The university library is my second home now. They've had to get me a private room because it takes me only a second to absorb the printed page, and curious students invariably gather around me as I flip through my books.
Daniel Keyes
#13. All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body.
Daniel Keyes
#14. And other times there would be tenderness and holding-close liek a warm bath, and hands stroking my hair and brow, and the words carved about the cathedral of my childhood: 'He's like all the other children. He's a good boy.
Daniel Keyes
#15. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#16. The problem, dear professor, is that you wanted someone who could be made intelligent but still be kept in a cage and displayed when necessary to reap the honors you seek. The hitch is that I'm a person.
Daniel Keyes
#17. Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.
Charlie Gordan
Daniel Keyes
#18. I may soon be coming to Warren, tos pend the rest of my life with the others ... waiting.
Daniel Keyes
#19. I realize now that my feeling for Alice had been moving backward against the current of my learning, from worship, to love, to fondness, to a feeling of gratitude and responsibility.
Daniel Keyes
#20. how foolish I was ever to have thought that professors were intellectual giants. They're people - and afraid the rest of the world will find out.
Daniel Keyes
#21. Alice knows everything about me, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.
Daniel Keyes
#22. There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.
Daniel Keyes
#23. The only question now is: How much can I hang on to?
Daniel Keyes
#24. I don't know what's worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be, and feel alone.
Daniel Keyes
#25. Algernon is a pleasant companion. At mealtimes, he takes his place at the small gateleg table. He likes pretzels, and today he took a sip of beer while we watched the ballgame on TV. I think he rooted for the Yankees.
Daniel Keyes
#26. Holy smoke I reely pulled a Charlie Gordon that time.
Daniel Keyes
#27. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less - filling
Daniel Keyes
#28. . . . the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes . . .' October
Daniel Keyes
#29. The last time we were here," I said, "I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you.
Daniel Keyes
#30. 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?
Daniel Keyes
#31. Seeing myself in the front mirror looking into the back mirror, as he held it for me, it tilted for an instant into the one angle that produced the illusion of depth; endless corridors of myself... looking at myself... looking at myself... looking... Which one? Who was I?
Daniel Keyes
#32. 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?
Daniel Keyes
#33. Ordinary people, she said, can see only a little bit. They can't change much or go any higher than they are, but you're a genius. You'll keep going up and up, and see more and more. And each step will reveal worlds you never even knew existed.
Daniel Keyes
#34. Who's to say that death is better than your darkness?
Daniel Keyes
#35. If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.
Daniel Keyes
#36. When you mature intellectually we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally you may not even want me.
Daniel Keyes
#37. Strauss again brought up my need to speak and wrtie simply and directly so that people will understand me. He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway. Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.
Daniel Keyes
#38. The answer can't be found in books - or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you - feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you've got to learn to trust yourself
Daniel Keyes
#39. Shut up!Leave him alone! He cant understand. He cant help what he is ... but for God's sake, have some respect! He's a human being!
Daniel Keyes
#40. It doesn't mean,' she shrugged. 'It just is
Daniel Keyes
#41. Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.
Daniel Keyes
#42. So even if I'm getting intelligent and learning a lot of new things, he thinks I'm still a boy about women. It's confusing, but I'm going to find out all about my life.
Daniel Keyes
#43. Unlike Charlie, I was incapable of making friends or thinking about other people and their problems. I was interested in myself, and myself only. Fr one long moment in that mirror I had seen myself through Charlie's eyes - looked down at myself and saw what I had really become. And I was ashamed.
Daniel Keyes
#44. Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born.
Daniel Keyes
#45. Solitude gives me a chance to read and think, and now that the memories are coming through again - to rediscover my past, to find out who and what I really am. If anything should go wrong, I'll have at least that.
Daniel Keyes
#46. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up to my pores during the day, and at night - in the moments before I pass off into sleep - ideas explode into my head like fireworks.
Daniel Keyes
#47. ARTIFICIALLY-INDUCED INTELLIGENCE DETERIORATES AT A RATE OF TIME DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE QUANTITY OF THE INCREASE.
Daniel Keyes
#48. I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.
Daniel Keyes
#49. It must be rather dull taking up someone else's work rather than something you've conceived and created yourself.
Daniel Keyes
#50. What's right? Ironic that all my intelligence doesn't help me solve a problem like this.
Daniel Keyes
#51. Downhill. Thoughts of suicide to stop it all now while I am still in control and aware of the world around me. But then I think of Charlie waiting at the window. His life is not mine to throw away. I've just burrowed it for a while, and now I'm being asked to return it.
Daniel Keyes
#52. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.
Daniel Keyes
#53. Because I want to see. I've got to know what's going to happen while I'm still enough in control to be able to do something about it.
Daniel Keyes
#54. The more intelligent you become the more problems you'll have, Charlie.
Daniel Keyes
#55. There is no question about it now. I'm in love.
Daniel Keyes
#56. A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.
Daniel Keyes
#57. I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damn thing. It only leads to violence and pain.
Daniel Keyes
#58. It's a strange sensation to pick up a book you read and enjoyed just a few months ago and discover you don't remember it.
Daniel Keyes
#59. To control one's own destiny takes a mastermind. To execute the plans takes a fool.
Daniel Keyes
#60. I love the fact that 'Flowers for Algernon' is doing its part to get people reading.
Daniel Keyes
#61. As soon as ... begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody.
Daniel Keyes
#62. had reached a new level, and anger and suspicion were my first reactions to the world around me. Burt's
Daniel Keyes
#63. That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.
Daniel Keyes
#65. Its easy to have frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go.
Daniel Keyes
#66. Time assumes another dimension now - work and absorption in the search for an answer.
Daniel Keyes
#67. Pushing too hard will only make things freeze up. How many great problems have gone unsolved because 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?
Daniel Keyes
#68. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#69. there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn." I
Daniel Keyes
#70. Then when you want free association, you could stretch your patient out the way the barber does to lather up his customer, and when the fifty minutes are up, you could tilt the chair forward again and hand him a mirror so he can see what he looks like on the outside after you've shaved his ego.
Daniel Keyes
#71. I see now that when Norma flowered in our garden I became a weed, allowed to exist only where I would not be seen, in corners and dark places.
Daniel Keyes
#72. I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the backyard. I cried.
Daniel Keyes
#73. Three blind mice ... three blind mice, See how they run, See how they runt
They all run after the farmer's wife, She cut oft their tails with a carving
knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three ... blind ... mice?
Daniel Keyes
#74. Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.
Daniel Keyes
#75. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#76. Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you.
Daniel Keyes
#77. He wished me luk. I hope I have luk. I got my rabits foot and my luky penny and my horshoe. Dr Strauss said dont be so superstishus Charlie. This is sience. I dont know what sience is but they all keep saying it so maybe its something that helps you have good luk.
Daniel Keyes
#78. I didn't know what to tell her.I wished I could say that like the House of Atreus or Cadmus we were suffering for the sinesof our forefathers, or fulfilling an ancient Greek oracle.But I had no answer for her, or for myself.
Daniel Keyes
#79. Thank God for books and music and things I can think about.
Daniel Keyes
#80. I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of frends who like me.
Daniel Keyes
#81. My father was in the paper recycling business back before they called it recycling.
Daniel Keyes
#82. Each day I learn more and more about myself, and the memories that began to ripples now wash over in high breaking waves ...
Daniel Keyes
#83. Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space. And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below.
Daniel Keyes
#84. Language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway.
Daniel Keyes
#85. what's wrong with a person wanting to be more intelligent, to acquire knowledge, and understand himself and the world?" "If you'd read your Bible, Charlie, you'd know that it's not meant for man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord
Daniel Keyes
#86. She was excited by the idea of having something dedicated to her, but I don't think she really liked it. Just goes to show that you can't have everything you want in one woman.One more argument for polygamy.
Daniel Keyes
#87. I hated her as I had never hated anyone before - with her easy answers and maternal fussing. I wanted to slap her face, to make her crawl, and then to hold her in my arms and kiss her.
Daniel Keyes
#88. It's exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy - about Shakespeare and Milton; Newton and Einstein and Freud; about Plato and Hegel and Kant, and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind.
Daniel Keyes
#89. I can't afford to spend my time with anyone - there's only enough left for myself
Daniel Keyes
#90. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#91. It doesn't matter what he thinks of himself. Sure he's egotistic, so what? It takes that kind of ego to make a man attempt a thing like this. I've seen enough of men like him to know that mixed in with that pompousness and self-assertion is a goddamned good measure of uncertainty and fear.
Daniel Keyes
#94. I wanted to be in love with her. I wanted to overcome my emotional and sexual fears, to marry, have children, settle down.
Daniel Keyes
#95. I dint know they had majers in collidge. I thot it was onley in the army. Anyway
Daniel Keyes
#96. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#98. I want to stop time, freeze myself at this level and never let go of her.
Daniel Keyes
#99. 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.
Daniel Keyes
#100. 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.
Daniel Keyes
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