One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

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.

it’s like an old clock that won’t tell time but won’t stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old, worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

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.

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.

No wife wanting new linoleum. No relatives pulling at him with watery old eyes. No one to care about, which is what makes him free enough to be a good con man.

So for forty years he was able to live, if not right in the world of men, at least on the edge of it.

“I’m tired,” is what he says. “I know you’re tired, Pete, but I can’t do you no good fretting about it. You know I can’t.”

You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey,

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.

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.

Only that cold linoleum under my feet was real right then, only that moment.

I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all.