Kesey One Flew Quotes & Sayings

But, gee," the other nurse says, "what on earth would MAKE a man want to do something like disrupt the ward for, Miss Ratched? What possible motive ... ?"
"You seem to forget, MISS Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane. — Ken Kesey

Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. — Ken Kesey

High high in the hills , high in a pine tree bed.
She's tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant,
Three geese in a flock
one flew east
one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo's nest — Ken Kesey

They're out there...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — Ken Kesey

I actually have a thing about proper nouns. They clang on my ear in a weird way when I hear them dropped into movies. — Josh Radnor

The way I remember it the tribe got paid some huge amount."
"That's what they said to him. He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for the way a man is? They didn't understand. — Ken Kesey

Well, my dad (Ken Griffey) taught me that there's three parts. There's hitting, there's defense, and there's baserunning. And as long as you keep those three separated, you're going to be a good player. I mean, you can't take your defense on the bases, you can't take your hitting to the field, and you can't take your baserunning at the plate. But defense, is number one. — Ken Griffey Jr.

I never really set out to research any of these stories. I try to lead an interesting life though. I guess the closest I came to research was when I applied to work at the state mental institution in Austin, TX. I wanted to work the night shift like Ken Kesey did when he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thought that might inspire me to write a book that great. — Arthur Bradford

I loved the movie theater so I always saw a lot of movies. And then there was a play, I saw in the local paper, they were having auditions for a play of a book I had read. Which was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. So I said, "oh, I've read this, so I'm perfect for the part of the lead." His name is escaping me. — Ed O'Neill

Any kind of organized revolt against the party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing to do was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. — George Orwell

Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof.
I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans.
Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man. — Anne Rice

I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind.... — Ken Kesey

I started to feel that nagging sense of shame again, an acute awareness of my own inability to share in his [my grandfather's] optimism. — Tea Obreht

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

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

They're out there. First line of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. — Ken Kesey

Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman. — Emma Donoghue