Flowers for Algernon

There was something about you that made us respect you—yes, even as you were. You had something I had never seen in a retarded person before."
"I don't regret the experiment."
"Neither do I, but you've lost something you had before. You had a smile..."
"An empty, stupid smile."
"No, a warm, real smile, because you wanted people to like you."
"And they played tricks on me, and laughed at me."
"Yes, but even though you didn't understand why they were laughing, you sensed that if they could laugh at you they would like you. And you wanted them to like you. You acted like a child and you even laughed at yourself along with them."

P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.

wanted to jump up and tell them, but I couldn't move. Like Algernon, I found myself behind the mesh of the cage they had built around me.

It might be said that Charlie Gordon did not really exist before this experiment.... "

I don't know why I resented it so intensely to have them think of me as something newly minted in their private treasury, but it was—I am certain—echoes of that idea that had been sounding in the chambers of my mind from the time we had arrived in Chicago.

The constant juxtaposition of "Algernon and Charlie," and "Charlie and Algernon," made it clear that they thought of both of us as a couple of experimental animals who had no existence outside the laboratory. But, aside from my anger, I couldn't get it out of my mind that something was wrong.

But still it's frightening to realize that my fate is in the hands of men who are not the giants I once thought them to be, men who don't know all the answers.

A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything—all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it.

Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.

I'm exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I've been exceptional.

But you're lopsided. You know things. You see things. But you haven't developed understanding, or—I have to use the word—tolerance. You call them phonies, but when did either of them ever claim to be perfect, or superhuman? They're ordinary people. You're the genius.