Normalizing Quotes

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“I can tell you as a scientist Diana, that there's no such thing as 'normal'." His voice was losing its careful softness. "'Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable- that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all”
― Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches

“But for a mother who was submissive to the degree my mother was, it was OK to kill girls. For a father like mine, it was normal to chop off his daughters hair with sheep shears, and to beat her with a belt or a cane or tie her up in the stable all night with the cows.”
― Souad, Burned Alive

“However much we disdain the word “politics”, one of its most useful aspects is the stopping of bloodshed. Oh yes, bloodshed there will be. But the generations stream away and people change and things thought of as totally impossible suddenly turn out to be everyday.”
― Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam