the killing joke

"Remember? Ohh, I wouldn't do that! Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. "The past tense", I suppose you'd call it, ha ha ha. Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy floss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go... somewhere dark and cold. Filled with the damp, ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes like children, I suppose. Haha. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit... You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away... forever." — Joker, Batman: The Kiling Joke