226 Quotes by Daniel Keyes

There is no question about it now. I’m in love.

I was afraid it would come to this, but I have no patience with her now. I’m jealous of every moment away from the work – impatient with any one who tries to steal my time.

I started out the evening with every intention of being pleasant and making friends. But these days I have trouble getting through to people. I don’t know if it’s me or them, but any attempt at conversation usually fades away in a minute or two, and the barriers go up. Is it because they are afraid of me? Or is it that deep down they don’t care and I feel the same about them?

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.

I find no pleasure in discussing ideas any more on such an elementary level.

I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being –.

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.

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.

Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night – in the moments before I pass off into sleep – ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem.