Quadrophenia 1979 - Eugene Ionesco - Ray Bradbury - Ellen Goodman - Aldous Huxley - Katherine Dunn - Charles Manson - Brian Clough - John Osborne - Oscar Wilde - Alejandro Jodorowsky - Mike Tyson - Albert Camus - Britney Spears - Malcolm X - Allen Ginsberg - Carl Gustav Jung - Jodie Foster - William James - Bruce Cockburn - Karen Horney - Judith Levine - Frank Zappa - R D Laing - Jean Dubuffet - The Office TV - Dick Cavett & Henry Kissinger TV - Chopper 2000 - Killing Eve TV - Money Heist 2019 - Ozark 2018-2020 - Adam Curtis TV - The Cage Fighter 2017 -
Jimmy’s Mum: Running about on them motorbikes all hours of the night I’m not surprised. It’s not normal.
Jimmy: Oh yeah, what’s normal then? Quadrophenia 1979 starring Phil Daniels & Mark Wingett & Leslie Ash & Philip Davis & Sting & Toyah Willcox & Ray Winstone & Gary Shail & Michael Elphick et al, director Franc Roddam
Living is abnormal. Eugene Ionesco, Le Rhinoceros, 1959
‘Why aren’t you in school? I see you every day wandering around.’
‘Oh, they don’t miss me,’ she said. ‘I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.’ She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. ‘Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around ... I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That’s supposed to prove I'm abnormal.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. Ellen Goodman
It must be something voluntary, something self-induced – like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what's normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to society. It’s unimaginable! No question about what you do with your orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society you’re supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a sane one? And even if it’s pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it? Aldous Huxley, Island
I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
I never thought I was normal, never tried to be normal. Normal runs in that little rut down there. I don’t know nothing about being normal. I’ve been in jail all my life, man. I lived on the handball court. This guy raised me up. All the men in the joint raised me up, told me what to do, what was right and wrong, told me where to sit down, where to stand up. I just did whatever I was told. You know, and I got to the end of it and I just turned around and said, ‘Wow, far out!’ Charles Manson, interview Tom Snyder, 1981
I think I’m quite normal in actual fact. Brian Clough
5Thank God we’re normal,
Yes, this is our finest shower! John Osborne, The Entertainer
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being. Oscar Wilde
Normality is to be different. Every person is a different person. And one day you need to be aware of your difference. Aware that you are not the same as the others. That is to be normal. Alejandro Jodorowsky
I’m in trouble because I’m normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don’t like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself. Mike Tyson
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus
I’m pretty normal, you know? Britney Spears
When ghetto living seems normal, you have no shame, no privacy. Malcolm X
The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive. Allen Ginsberg
To be normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful. Carl Gustav Jung
Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from. Jodie Foster
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal. William James
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse. Bruce Cockburn
The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization. Karen Horney
Normal is enormously susceptible to swinging with the gusts of politics and history. Disguised as scientific and fixed, it is subjective and protean. Judith Levine, Therapy 2003
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. Frank Zappa
What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical ‘mechanisms.’ There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically ‘normal’ forms of alienation. The ‘normally’ alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the ‘formal’ majority as bad or mad. R D Laing, The Politics of Experience/The Bird of Paradise
For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity. Jean Dubuffet
Just another normal day in the office. The Office s2e5: Charity ***** Brent, BBC 2002
‘He invited crises and that he couldn’t stand normalcy.’ Dick Cavett’s Watergate, Kissinger of Nixon
I’m trying to think of the last time I actually took some time to be normal, you know. Chopper 2000 starring Eric Bana & Vince Colosimo & Simon Lyndon & David Field & Kate Beahan & Dan Wyllie & Fletcher Humphrys & Robert Rabiah & Brian Mannix & Serge Liistro & Skye Wansey & Renne Brack et al, director Andrew Dominik, him to her
We can go back to just being normal. Killing Eve: Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body? Eve to husband, BBC 2019
Geniuses are weird. Why, do you think you’re an example of maturity? Do you? Think you’re considered normal? Do you think it’s normal to arrange your shirts by colour? Money Heist s2e3, Tokyo to Professor, Netflix 2017
There is nothing normal about anything we do. Ozark s3e10: All in, son to family, Netflix 2020
So much of the news this year has been hopeless and depressing and above all confusing, to which the only response is Oh Dear. Adam Curtis, Oh Dearism II, short film 2014
That defeatest response has become a central part of a new system of political control. ibid.
A constant state of destabilized perception. ibid.
Quantitative Easing: the equivalent of £24,000 for every family in Britain … The biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in recent documented history. ibid.
Nothing really makes any coherent sense. ibid.