One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Quotes
"They can’t tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed."
"When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart."
"He’s happy with it. He’s adjusted to surroundings finally."
"A successful Dismissal like this is a product brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart and speaks good of her craft and the whole industry in general."
"And if you hear a friend say something during the course of your everyday conversation, then list it in the log book for the staff to see."
"Our intention is to make this as much like your own democratic, free neighborhoods as possible—a little world Inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of the big world Outside."
"I don’t like to swallow something without knowing what it is."
"Why, you sure did give a jump when I told you that coon was coming, Chief. I thought somebody told me you was deef."
"But this will do fine for me. We’ll look into that ward policy business later."
"And what I deduce you marks need is a big fat pot to temptate you."
"Your horses are hungry, that’s what she did say."
"The only way to prevent it—with chickens—is to clip blinders on them. So’s they can’t see."
"The only thing you can move is your eyes and there’s nothing to see but petrified Acutes across the room waiting on one another to decide whose play it is."
"I feel good, seeing McMurphy get that black boy’s goat like not many men could."
"Everybody is finished eating and leaned back, watching the big hand to move to seven-thirty."
"There’s nothing else to do, with no cards or magazines or picture puzzles. Just sleep or watch the clock."
"After about two minutes of pushing food scraps around his plate with his spoon, he’s ready for more excitement."
"The butter makes it down to the floor about a half a minute before seven-thirty."
"You’ve been told, Mr. McMurphy, that it’s against the policy to gamble for money on the ward."
"He tugs at that little tuft of red showing out of the neck of his greens, then says."
"It’s not so bad. There’s no pain. I don’t feel much of anything other than a touch of chill I figure will pass in time."
"But I tried, though. Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?"
"It’s past time we started. Now. Miss Ratched, as most of you know, called this get-together."
"He writes letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand."
"How could a man who looked like him paint pictures or write letters to people?"
"McMurphy wasn’t like that. He hadn’t let what he looked like run his life one way or the other."
"I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside."
"It’s fall coming, I kept thinking, fall coming; just like that was the strangest thing ever happened."
"You men are in this hospital because of your proven inability to adjust to society."
"The doctor tilted his head so he could look at the nurse through his glasses."
"I plan to stay as clear of that old buzzard as I possibly can."
"I was picked up for drunk and disorderly, and I been here eight years and eight months."
"She folds her hands in front of her, might hold a candle, and looks down at what’s left of him oozing out of the cuffs of his pants and shirt."
"You men would return to bed after breakfast."
"You think I wouldn’t like a convertible and a girlfriend? But did you ever have people laughing at you?"
"She looks in the mirror, sees it’s darker’n ever."
"I can understand it with some of those old guys on the ward. They’re nuts."
"I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound."
"That’s the Shock Shop I was telling you about some time back, my friend, the EST, Electro-Shock Therapy."
"The pool always scared me; I was always afraid I’d step in over my head and drown."
"It’s difficult to enforce discipline in these surroundings."
"I hear tell her next decision is about trips to the can."
"I heard him talk to the lifeguard. He’s finally getting cagey, is all."
"I don’t care much about the idea of buying a carton of cigarettes and having somebody tell me when I can smoke them."
"It’s entirely for your own good that we enforce discipline and order."
"Everybody worked on him because he was big, and wouldn’t give in, and did like he pleased."
"What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for what a man is?"
"They can’t have somebody as big as Papa running around unless he’s one of them."
"They work on you ways you can’t fight! They put things in! They install things."
"I just want to touch him because he’s who he is."
"That ocean could be awful bad, sure, awful rough."
"You bet, su-ure. Twenty-five year I work the Chinook trollers."
"He knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance."
"She knew that people, being like they are, sooner or later are going to draw back a ways from somebody who seems to be giving a little more than ordinary."
"You watch; everything he’s done was done with reason."
"It's society's way of dealing with someone different."
"You have to know about Billy Bibbit: in spite of him having wrinkles in his face and specks of gray in his hair, he still looked like a kid."
"I thought back on the night, on what we’d been doing, and it was near impossible to believe."
"The Big Nurse would have found out some way what had gone on, maybe just by the look on Billy’s face."
"It was like he’d signed on for the whole game and there wasn’t any way of him breaking his contract."
"We couldn’t stop him because we were the ones making him do it."
"I’d been listening to the breathing for hours... hoping as I listened they would stop for good."
"The big, hard body had a tough grip on life. It fought a long time against having it taken away."
"I lay for a while, holding the covers over my face, and thought I was being pretty quiet."
"I was suddenly ashamed of trying to wear it."