DANIEL KEYES

I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damn thing. It only leads to violence and pain.

My father was in the paper recycling business back before they called it recycling.

I love the fact that 'Flowers for Algernon' is doing its part to get people reading.

I thought: 'My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love.' And then I wondered: 'What would happen if it were possible to increase a person's intelligence?'

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.

Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here.

Here look at me. I'm Charlie, the son you wrote off the books? Not that I blame you for it, but here I am, all fixed up better than ever. Test me. Ask me questions. I speak twenty languages, living and dead; I'm a mathematical whiz, and I'm writing a piano concerto that will make them remember me long after I'm gone.

Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?

I can't afford to spend my time with anyone - there's only enough left for myself

...Don't feel sorry for me. I'm glad I had a second chance in life like you said to be smart because I learned a lot of things that I never knew were in this world, and I'm grateful I saw it even for a little bit.

There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.

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.

I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the backyard. I cried.

Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.

No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

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.

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?

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men." --Charlie Gordan

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.

Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

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

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.

How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.

So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.

Thank God for books and music and things I can think about." --Charlie Gordan