Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)

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You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side things.

Ken Kesey
Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

Ken Kesey
Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures being real guys...

Ken Kesey
You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think. Yes...I see...

Ken Kesey
He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered.

Ken Kesey
No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.

Ken Kesey
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
Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another.

Ken Kesey
"But I tried though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"

Ken Kesey
Later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

Ken Kesey
He was in his chair in the corner, resting a second before he came out for the next round — in a long line of next rounds. The thing he was fighting, you couldn't whip it for good. All you could do was keep on whipping it, till you couldn't come out anymore and somebody else had to take your place.

Ken Kesey
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
There's no doubt in my mind that McMurphy's won, but I'm not sure what.

Ken Kesey
He's got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he's got pretty hands.

Ken Kesey
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
She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted—it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.

Ken Kesey
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out 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 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 knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend 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
All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.

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

Ken Kesey
If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.

Ken Kesey
Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.

Ken Kesey
I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it.... I'm tired.

Ken Kesey
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
Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?

Ken Kesey
One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Ken Kesey
More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear face to face.

Ken Kesey
This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

Ken Kesey
What can you pay for the way a man lives? What can you pay for what a man is?

Ken Kesey
The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon

Ken Kesey
Then—as he was talking—a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do...

Ken Kesey