I was going through my shelf, trying to figure out which books to read on vacation and which books to trade back in to the English bookstore here in Seoul. I came across this book - Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho. I think I've avoided it in the past, as the main plot in the story revolves around a girl who tries to commit suicide and fails - and my best friend committed suicide a little more than a year ago. However, now that I have some time before I leave to sit and think about things, I realized that now was probably an appropriate time to read it. It's a fascinating read, and I highly suggest it to anyone who is looking for a thought-provoking short novella. It has quite a few good quotes that I'd like to share with you now. A lot of the questions that are brought to the forefront raise the question of what is normal and what is insane. I hope you all enjoy this...or at least think about these as much as I did.
"What did it mean to be crazy? She hadn't the slightest idea, because the word was used in a completely anarchic way. People would say, for example, that certain sportsmen were crazy because they wanted to break records, or that artists were crazy because they led such strange, insecure lives, different from the lives of normal people."
"Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others....You have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people - and thousands of others - all lived in their own world."
"Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I felt as nature was in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which I could not participate was somehow unfair."
"Imagine a place where people pretend to be crazy in order to do exactly what they want."
"To say good-bye. That was the really difficult part. Once in a mental hospital, a person grows used to the freedom that exists in the world of insanity and becomes addicted to it....You could cry, get worried or angry like any other normal human being, as long as you remembered that, up above, your spirit was laughing out loud at all those thorny situations."
"I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there...And all of us, one way or another, are insane."
"We are all brought up only to love, to accept, to look for ways around things, to avoid conflict."
"Just as prison never corrects the prisoner - it only teaches him to commit more crimes - so hospitals merely got patients used to a completely unreal world, where everything was allowed and where no one had to take responsibility for their actions."
"The happier people can be, the unhappier they are."
"You say they create their own reality,' said Veronika, "but what is reality?'
'It's whatever the majority deems it to be. It's not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it's the one that supports the desires of society as a whole."
"Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world no external threat can penetrate, build exaggeratedly high defenses against the outside world, against new people, new places, different experiences, and leave their inner world stripped bare. It is there that bitterness begins its irrevocable work.'
"What's dignity? It's wanting everyone to think you're good, well-behaved, full of love for your fellow man. Have some respect for nature, watch a few films about animals, and see how they fight for their own space."
"Don't confuse insanity with a loss of control."
"We've replaced nearly all of our emotions with fear."
"It was very dangerous being uninhabited in bed; there was always the fear that the other person might still be a slave to their preconceived ideas."
"An idea only exists when someone tries to put it into practice."
"God was there, and yet people believed they still had to go on looking, because it seemed to simple to accept that life was an act of faith."
"There are things in life, though, which, however we look at them, are valid for everyone. Like love, for example."
"We all live in our own world. But if you look up at the starry sky, you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies."
