He reads the encyclopedia article on mental disorders. The section on diagnosing schizophrenia contains this sentence: Beliefs should not be considered delusional if they are in keeping with societal norms.
Clipping
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
They christen themselves with forest names that night, in the soft drizzle of the redwoods, on a blanket of needles. The game seems childish, at first. But all of art is childish, all storytelling, all human hope and fear.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
Falling asleep, he reads the same paragraph a dozen times; the words turn into twirling things, like winged seeds spinning in the air.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
when you spend all your hours with horses, your soul expands a bit until the ways of men reveal themselves to be no more than a costume party you’d be well advised not to take at face value.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
In fact, it’s Douggie’s growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth. Single biggest influence on what a body will or won’t believe is what nearby bodies broadcast over the public band. Get three people in the room and they’ll decide that the law of gravity is evil and should be rescinded because one of their uncles got shit-faced and fell off the roof.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
Once, the fate of the human race might have been in the hands of the well-adjusted, the social ones, the masters of emotion. Now all that is getting upgraded.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
An old man, I want only peace. The things of this world mean nothing. I know no good way to live and I can’t stop getting lost in my thoughts, my ancient forests. The wind that waves the pines loosens my belt. The mountain moon lights me as I play my lute. You ask: how does a man rise or fall in this life? The fisherman’s song flows deep under the river.
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
Before the people at the customer service desk even hand her the phone, she knows. And all the way home to Illinois she thinks: How do I recognize this already? Why does this all feel so much like remembering?
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books > The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers)
You have given me a thing I could never have imagined, before I knew you. It’s like I had the word “book,” and you put one in my hands. I had the word “game,” and you taught me how to play. I had the word “life,” and then you came along and said, “Oh! You mean this.” He says there’s nothing on Earth he can give to her, for their anniversary, to thank her for what she has given him.
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books > The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade) (Dickinson, Seth)
Understood what the books and the generals always repeated: that armies did not kill each other, they broke each other, that the day would be won when one army believed it could not survive.