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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest QUOTES

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest QUOTES

1 " But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2 " They can't tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

3 " It's the truth, even if it didn't happen...

...if they don't exist, how can a man see them? "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

4 " I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

5 " We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing -- half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

6 " Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

7 " I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

8 " I'm accustomed to being top man. I been a bull goose catskinner for every gyppo logging operation in the Northwest and bull goose gambler all the way from Korea, was even bull goose pea weeder on that pea farm at Pendleton -- so I figure if I'm bound to be a loony, then I'm bound to be a stompdown dadgum good one. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

9 " I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind.... "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

10 " Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

11 " I don't think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I'm not able to give you those. Not for the others, anyway. For myself? Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was-- shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general world than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

12 " All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

13 " He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

14 " But I remember one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf, it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

15 " You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

16 " I'd think, maybe he truly is something extraordinary. He's what he is, that's it. Maybe that makes him strong enough, being what he is. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

17 " ...I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did-took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren't built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

18 " To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ... "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

19 " That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

20 " While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh across the water. Laughing at the girl,at the guys, at George,at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He know's there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain. "

― Ken Kesey , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest