One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Quotes

Quote 1: "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." Chapter 1, pg. 13

Quote 2: "Yes. This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes
made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a
completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes,
it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart...." Chapter 4, pg. 40

Quote 3: "'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.'" Chapter 5, pg. 52

Quote 4: "But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?" Chapter 7, pg. 82

Quote 5: "I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't
make any difference.... To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five,
but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won
for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." Chapter 9, pg. 101

Quote 6: "'But I tried though,' he says. 'Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?'"
Chapter 11, pg. 111

Quote 7: "And 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." Chapter 17, pg. 140

Quote 8: "But just as soon as we got to the pool he said he did wish something mighta been done,
though, and dove into the water." Chapter 18, pg. 151

Quote 9: "'Well, screw you and "what do you think?" I've got worries of my own without getting
hooked with yours. So just quit!' He glares around the library at the other patients. 'Alla you!
Quit bugging me, goddammit!'" Chapter 21, pg. 160

Quote 10: "'You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-
vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because
you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.'" Chapter 22, pg. 168

Quote 11: "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." Chapter 25, pp. 211-12

Quote 12: "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...." Chapter 25, pg. 218

Quote 13: "And he'd swell up, aware that every one of those faces on Disturbed had turned toward
him and was waiting, and he'd tell the nurse he regretted that he had but one life to give for his
country and she could kiss his rosy red ass before he'd give up the goddam ship. Yeh!" Chapter 28,
pg. 242

Quote 14: "'Yeah? Not that I'm admitting I'm down that road, but what is this something else?'"

"'It is us.' He swept his hand about him in a soft white circle and repeated, 'Us.'" Chapter 28, pg.
258

Quote 15: "'What worries me, Billy,' she said- I could hear the change in her voice- 'is how your
mother is going to take this.'" Chapter 29, pg. 264

Quote 16: "'First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you're finally satisfied. Playing
with human lives- gambling with human lives- as if you thought yourself to be a God!'" Chapter 29,
pg. 266

Quote 17: "A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever
trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as
the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying."
Chapter 29, pg. 267

Quote 18: "I been away a long time." Chapter 29, pg. 272

Quote 18: “How'd he manage to slip the collar? Maybe, like old Pete, the Combine missed getting to him soon
enough with controls. Maybe he growed up so wild all over the country, batting around from one place to
another, never around one town longer'n a few months when he was a kid so a school never got much a hold on
him, logging, gambling, running carnival wheels, traveling lightfooted and fast, keeping on the move so much that
the Combine never had a chance to get anything installed. Maybe that's it, he never gave the Combine a chance,
just like he never gave the black boy a chance to get to him with the thermometer yesterday morning, because a
moving target is hard to hit.

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. And maybe the reason the black boys don't rush into that
latrine and put a stop to his singing is because they know he's out of control, and they remember that time with
old Pete and what a man out of control can do. And they can see that McMurphy's a lot bigger than old Pete; if it
comes down to getting the best of him, it's going to take all three of them and the Big Nurse waiting on the
sidelines with a needle. The Acutes nod at one another; that's the reason, they figure, that the black boys haven't
stopped his singing where they would stop any of the rest of us.”(8.6-7)

Quote: “Harding's hand touches McMurphy's knee. "Put your troubled mind at ease, my friend. In all likelihood you needn't
concern yourself with EST. It's almost out of vogue and only used in the extreme cases nothing else seems to reach, like
lobotomy."

"Now lobotomy, that's chopping away part of the brain?"

"You're right again. You're becoming very sophisticated in the jargon. Yes; chopping away the brain. Frontal-lobe castration. I
guess if she can't cut below the belt she'll do it above the eyes."
"You mean Ratched."

"I do indeed."

"I didn't think the nurse had the say-so on this kind of thing."

"She does indeed."

McMurphy acts like he's glad to get off talking about shock and lobotomy and get back to talking about the Big Nurse. He
asks Harding what he figures is wrong with her. Harding and Scanlon and some of the others have all kinds of ideas. They
talk for a while about whether she's the root of all the trouble here or not, and Harding says she's the root of most of it. Most
of the other guys think so too, but McMurphy isn't so sure any more. He says he thought so at one time but now he don't
know. He says he don't think getting her out of the way would really make much difference; he says that there's something
bigger making all this mess and goes on to try to say what he thinks it is. He finally gives up when he can't explain it. (2.7.25-
33)

Quote: As I walked after them it came to me as a kind of sudden surprise that I was drunk, actually drunk,
glowing and grinning and staggering drunk for the first time since the Army, drunk along with half a dozen other
guys and a couple of girls—right on the Big Nurse's ward! Drunk and running and laughing and carrying on with
women square in the center of the Combine's most powerful stronghold! I thought back on the night, on what
we'd been doing, and it was near impossible to believe. I had to keep reminding myself that it had truly happened,
that we had made it happen. We had just unlocked a window and let it in like you let in the fresh air. Maybe the
Combine wasn't all-powerful. What was to stop us from doing it again, now that we saw we could? Or keep us
from doing other things we wanted? (4.3.120)

quote: “I was a whole lot bigger in those days” bronden (p. 36)

quote: “and I'd think, 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 then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't
seem like I ever been me.” pg 140

quote: 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. A man go around lettin’ a woman whup him up
and down till he can’t laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he’s got on his side.
First thing you know he’ll begin to think she’s tougher than he is…” p70

quote: "What worries me, Billy," she said—I could hear the change in her voice—"is how your poor mother is going to take this."

She got the response she was after. Billy flinched and put his hand to his cheek like he'd been burned with acid.

"Mrs. Bibbit's always been so proud of your discretion. I know she has. This is going to disturb her terribly. You know how she
is when she gets disturbed, Billy; you know how ill the poor woman can become. She's very sensitive. Especially concerning
her son. She always spoke so proudly of you. She al—"
"Nuh! Nuh!" His mouth was working. He shook his head, begging her. "You d-don't n-n-need!"

"Billy Billy Billy," she said. "Your mother and I are old friends."

"No!" he cried. His voice scraped the white, bare walls of the Seclusion Room. He lifted his chin so he was shouting at the
moon of light in the ceiling. "N-n-no!" We'd stopped laughing. We watched Billy folding into the floor, head going back, knees
coming forward. He rubbed his hand up and down that green pant leg. He was shaking his head in panic like a kid that's been
promised a whipping just as soon as a willow is cut. (4.4.32-37)