There can never be satisfactory answers to such questions! They assume something which isn't true, which is an oxymoron: that crazy folk reason like sane folk. Yet the very definition of 'crazy' is that it is not reasonable as sane folk define reasonableness. It connotes irrationality, too: that the chain of events which sane persons call causality, is messed up.

A person is called crazy because she doesn't have 'reasons' the way a sane person would have them; and because a crazy person's 'becauses' are broken, by the standards of the sane.

You may have noticed that I've been careful to describe 'crazy' relative to what 'sane' means. That I say this doesn't mean that I believe that crazy persons aren't really crazy, or that sanity and madness are really equal, that it's all a matter of your point of view.*

In my experience, crazy people are, for the most part, very nasty characters. They'll hurt you if they get the chance. Whenever I come across a crazy person, I get right away.

There are sweet exceptions, of course, and they're the ones who get all the press: heartwarming reading.

  By Allison Fass. [New York Times: Movies]

TriBeCa: abbreviation of Triangle Below Canal Street, which is a district of Manhattan, in New York City.

  By Neil Genzlinger. [New York Times: Arts]