The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.

Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.

The world, in truth, is a wedding.

Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks