Saints

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light, their mortification and reward, and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting their relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubborness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints... 

~Mark Helprin