One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

I mean, whoever heard tell of a man gettin’ too much poozle?

an illiterate clod, perhaps, certainly a backwoods braggart with no more sensitivity than a goose,

If you’re up against a guy who wants to win by making you weaker instead of making himself stronger, then watch for his knee, he’s gonna go for your vitals.

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

He’s a man made outa skin and bone that’s due to get weak and pale and die, just like the rest of us.

I forget sometimes what laughter can do.

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.

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.

for what they try to tell us is chest X-rays for TB, which I know is a check to see if everybody’s machinery is functioning up to par.

“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.”

But I remembered 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.

Papa says 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.

“As my sociology professor used to emphasize, ‘There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of.” And they get back in the car and drive away, with me standing there wondering if they ever even saw me.

He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for what a man is?

“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.

I had forgotten that there can be good sounds and tastes like the sound and taste of a beer going down.

he knew you can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.

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

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.

I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me.

Hit at a lope, running already down the slope. Can’t get back, can’t go ahead, look down the barrel an’ you dead dead dead.

‘Shame. Shame. Shame.’ It’s society’s way of dealing with someone different.”