Top 180 Daniel Keyes Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 4

151. “They all think I’m killing myself at this pace, but what they don’t understand is that I’m living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed.”

— Daniel Keyes

152. “As long as the writer, or any artist for that matter, keeps his mouth shut, there can be argument and discussion and various interpretations and meanings. But once the writer explains or analyzes, he trivializes his own work.”

— Daniel Keyes

153. “And so it went. Most of them felt the way Joe and Frank and Gimpy did. It had been all right as long they could laugh at me and appear clever at my expense, but now they were feeling inferior to the moron. I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies. I had betrayed them, and they hated me for it.”

— Daniel Keyes

154. “It is impossible to tell what proportion is memory and what exists here and now – so that a strange compound is formed of memory and reality; past and present; response to stimuli stored in my brain centers, an response to stimuli in this room. It’s as if all the things I’ve learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light...”

— Daniel Keyes

155. “You can’t have everything you want in one woman. One more argument for polygamy.”

— Daniel Keyes

156. “She brings me things to eat and she fixes my bed and she says I was a very brave man to let them do things to my hed. She says she woud never let them do things to her branes for all the tea in china. I tolld her it wasnt for tea in china. It was to make me smart.”

— Daniel Keyes

157. “Ma io so adesso che voi tutti avete trascurato una cosa: l’intelligenza e l’educazione che non siano temperate dall’affetto umano non valgono nulla.”

— Daniel Keyes

158. “I put Algernon’s body into a small metal container and took him home with me. I wasn’t going to let them dump him into the incinerator. It’s foolish and sentimental, but late last night I buried him in the back yard. I wept as I put a bunch of wild flowers on the grave.”

— Daniel Keyes

159. “I dedicated my first piano concerto to Fay. 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

160. “If I coud I woud sit down and reed all the time.”

— Daniel Keyes

161. “Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner.”

— Daniel Keyes

162. “I know I should have written some progress reports before this so they will know whats happening to me. But writing is harder. I have to look up even simple words in the dictionary now and it makes me angry with myself.”

— Daniel Keyes

163. “On the sidewalk, a discarded refrigerator with its face ripped off, and on the curb an old mattress with wire intestines hanging out of its belly.”

— Daniel Keyes

164. “I danced with too many squares tonight. Let’s melt ’em all down.”

— Daniel Keyes

165. “Qualquer um pode se sentir inteligente ao lado de um imbecil.”

— Daniel Keyes

166. “I remember that she was always fluttering like a big, white bird – around my father, and he too heavy and tired to escape her pecking.”

— Daniel Keyes

167. “No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery.”

— Daniel Keyes

168. “Before he could say any more or try to stop me, I was out of the lab, and I caught the elevator down and out of Beekman for the last time.”

— Daniel Keyes

169. “I want you to understand this mite fale and then nothing woud happen at all. Or it mite even sucseed temperary and leeve you werse off then you are now.”

— Daniel Keyes

170. “Dan, you don’t mean to tell me that you didn’t get in touch with the bookstores in Detroit and tell them about it.” “No,” I said. “I’m kind of shy. And I didn’t think it was my job.” “Dan, you shouldn’t hide your light under a bushel.”

— Daniel Keyes

171. “He finished shaving me silently, and then brought the sun-tan lamp over to the chair and put cool white pads of cotton soaked in witch hazel over my eyes. There, in the bright red inner darkness I saw what happened the night he took me away from the house for the last time .”

— Daniel Keyes

172. “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

173. “It doesn’t mean – she shrugged. It just is – like a poem.”

— Daniel Keyes

174. “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.”

— Daniel Keyes

175. “Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.”

— Daniel Keyes

176. “This day was good for me. I’ve got to stop this childish worrying about myself – my past and my future. Let me give something of myself to others. I’ve got to use my knowledge and skills to work in the field of increasing human intelligence.”

— Daniel Keyes

177. “I let it lay there and its torn white tongues were laughing because I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I’ve got to try to hold onto some of the things I’ve learned. Please, God, don’t take it all away.”

— Daniel Keyes

178. “You see that bottle?” I told him I had wondered about it when we came into his office. “Well, how many people do you know who are prepared to take a grown man into his arms and let him nurse with the bottle? And take the chance of having the patient urinate or defecate all over him? You look surprised. You can’t understand it, can you, from way up there in your research ivory tower? What do you know about being shut out from every human experience as our patients have been?”

— Daniel Keyes

179. “Even in my dullness I knew I was inferior. Other people had something I lacked – something denied me. In my mental blindness, I had believed it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would have intelligence too. 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.”

— Daniel Keyes

180. “She said for a person who God gave so little to you did more than a lot of people with brains they never even used.”

— Daniel Keyes

181. “This was the way he loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other’s arms, giving and taking. 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 toward the goal-box of solitary death.”

— Daniel Keyes

182. “The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.”

— Daniel Keyes

183. “I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies.”

— Daniel Keyes

184. “If I could reach out into the past of my memories, I would make her see how much she was hurting me.”

— Daniel Keyes

185. “I’ve got to guard against the natural tendency to look down on them now that I have surpassed them.”

— Daniel Keyes