"We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be."
-R. D. Laing
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"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.“
-R. D. Laing
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"Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that."
-R. D. Laing
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"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."
-R. D. Laing
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"There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain."
-R. D. Laing
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"The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation."
-R. D. Laing
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"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
-R. D. Laing
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"When we are dealing with death we are constantly being dragged down by the event: Humor diverts our attention and lifts our sagging spirits."
-Allen Klein
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"I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet."
-David Ortiz
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"What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy."
-Mario Puzo
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"So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb."
-Alastair Campbell
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"I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted."
-Fiona Shaw
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"Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death."
-John Thorn
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