One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest Quotes

The only walls that talk, are the white ones. ~ Anthony Liccione

- Know any good sailing jokes? - I've got one about seagulls. - Okay. - Why do seagulls fly over the sea? - Why? - Because if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

So, what's behind door number one?" Mary commented, bringing him out of his thoughts as the second air lock door opened.
"Pardon?"
"Oh, nothing. Game show reference, I make silly comments when I get nervous."
He led the way in to the corridor, on either side glass windows looked over the flanking rooms but it was too dark to see anything. Valdagerion suddenly stopped, listening. Abruptly he pressed her flat against the wall, almost crushing her just as four armed Unseeile appeared around the curve in the corner, rifles aiming. Blue bursts of light and heat flew past them.
"Shit." Mary squeaked. "I would have settled for the cuddly toy. ~ D.M. Alexandra

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

I'll never forget the time I went duck-hunting with my buddy Mike Williams; you'll read a lot about our adventures and shenanigans in this book. Mike and I were hunting blue-winged teal ducks, which tend to move en masse, so typically you'll either shoot your limit or not see a duck. In other words, there is a lot of idle time involved with teal hunting, so we usually bring along our fishing poles. After a hunt with Mike one morning, in which we had not seen a single teal, I hooked a four-pound bass. Almost simultaneously, one lone blue-winged teal flew over our heads. As I was reeling in the bass, I reached for my shotgun, raised it with only my left hand, and shot the duck. Now, I'm right-handed but left-eye dominant. It was the first duck I ever shot left-handed, but it would be the first of many. I eventually made the switch to shooting left-handed permanently. It was the hardest obstacle I've ever had to overcome in hunting, but it made me a better shot because I'm left-eye dominant.
When Mike and I went back to my dad's house and told him what happened, Phil didn't believe us, even though we had the teal and bass as evidence. He'd told us about a similar feat many times before, when his friend Hookin' Bull Thompson pulled in a fish with one hand and shot a duck with the other. I had heard the story many time, but only then did I realize it had now been duplicated. No matter how many times we told Phil about what I did, he didn't believe us. He thought we made the e ~ Jase Robertson

As they walked, the subtle lamplight of a dirigible washed over them. Finley glanced up, watching the light grow closer, slowly descending from the sky in a whirl of propellers as the ship made its way into the London air dock just a few miles away. How amazing it must be to float so high, to travel so quickly.
Dandy followed her gaze, but they didn't stop walking. "I was up in one of them flyers once," he told her. "I climbed over the rail and hung on to one of the ropes. Freeing it was. I almost let go."
She whipped her head around to gape at him. "The fall would kill you."
He smiled ever so slightly. "Not afore I flew. Worse ways to go. ~ Kady Cross

With force, Gansey kicked off his shoes. One flew over his miniature Henrietta and the other made it all the way to the side of his desk. It slammed off the old wood and slid to the ground. Under his breath, Gansey said, "Yee haw. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I love '30 Rock' because Tina Fey allows me to fly over the cuckoo nest once a week. ~ Tracy Morgan

What do you envision for your future, Anna?"
His abrupt question struck a nerve in me. It was the same question I'd been asking myself for months.
"I don't know," I said. "I used to know what I wanted, but not anymore."
He considered this, watching me with curiosity. "What did you want?"
I reached down and touched the water. "A family, mostly."
"And you no longer want that?"
I dried my hands on my jeans, trying not to get emotional. At one time, I wanted a loving husband and a houseful of kids more than anything in the world. But I'd let go of those dreams. I couldn't even adopt a child. What would the Dukes say if they caught me playing house?
"I can't have those things," I told him, still avoiding his stare. "And I'm tired of wanting things I can't have."
His voice was low when he responded. "Perhaps children are out of the question, but you could still have a husband, in secret."
My eyes flew up to his, and my skin sizzled as his words settled over me. I opened my mouth, but couldn't speak. His light eyes played chicken with mine, not backing down from his claim.
"It's too dangerous," I said.
"You are young." He didn't state it in a condescending way, but I still bristled. "Someday you may agree that there are dangers worth facing."
I swallowed, wishing my crazy heart would stop trying to break out of my rib cage. ~ Wendy Higgins

Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes,
She's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em inna pens
Wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock
One flew east, one flew west
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
O-U-T- spells out… goose swoops down and plucks you out. ~ Ken Kesey

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition. ~ Rick Yancey

That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!"

"Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it. I'll showyou how. Or I'll do it myself--I think I could. Though as it issuch a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basketo' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use'em."

"Of course you shan't do it," said Jude. "I'll do it, since it mustbe done."

He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of acouple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with theknives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparationsfrom the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of thescene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joinedher husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed theaffrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose torepeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and togetherthey hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Judeheld him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs tokeep him from struggling.

The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but thecry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.

"Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have hadthis to do!" said Jude. "A creature I have fed with my own hands."

"Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife--the one with the point. Now whatever ~ Thomas Hardy

Used to be when a bird flew into a window, Milly and Twiss got a visit. Milly would put a kettle on and set out whatever culinary adventure she'd gone on that day. For morning arrivals, she offered her famous vanilla drop biscuits and raspberry jam. Twiss would get the medicine bag from the hall closet and sterilize the tools she needed, depending on the seriousness of the injury. A wounded limb was one thing. A wounded crop was another.
People used to come from as far away as Reedsburg and Wilton. Milly would sit with them while Twiss patched up the 'poor old robin' or the 'sweet little meadowlark.' Over the years, the number of visitors had dwindled. Now that the grocery store sold ready-bake biscuits and jelly in all the colors of the rainbow, people didn't bother as much about birds. ~ Rebecca Rasmussen

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane. ~ Stephen Kinzer

As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways.

Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over. ~ Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits.

They went down again and soon the smell of the river spread over the woods, cool and secret. Every step they took among the great walls of vines and among the passion-flowers started up a little life, a little flight.

'We're walking along in the changing-time,' said Doc. 'Any day now the change will come. It's going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog that's ripe and have fresh meat to eat. Come one of these nights and we can wander down here and tree a nice possum. Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow.' He went along rapping the tree trunks with his knuckle. 'Magnolia and live-oak never die. Remember that. Persimmons will all get fit to eat, and the nuts will be dropping like rain all through the woods here. And run, little quail, run, for we'll be after you too.'

They went on and suddenly the woods opened upon light, and they had reached the river. Everyone stopped, but Doc talked on ahead as though nothing had happened. 'Only today,' he said, 'today, in October sun, it's all gold - sky and tree and ~ Eudora Welty

[I have] a heavenly vase full of autumn leaves today. They look so beautiful. How much closer to God can one get? And a beautiful blue heron flew over the brook. Nature can make me cry faster than anything. ~ Lotte Lenya

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perce ~ Alexander Lowen

Now, the last one was that the demon king can't stand either in heaven or on the earth. Urga set the demon on his lap, which means I guess I'll have to…sit on your back."
Awkward. Even though Ren was a big tiger and it would be like riding a small pony, I was still conscious that he was a man, and I didn't feel right about turning him into a pack animal. I took off my backpack and set it down wondering what I could do to make this a bit less embarrassing. Mustering the courage to sit on his back, I'd just decided that it wouldn't be too bad if I sat sidesaddle, when my feet flew out from under me.
Ren had changed into a man and swept me up into his arms. I wiggled for a minute, protesting, but he just gave me a look-the don't-even-bother-coming-up-with-an-argument look. I shut my mouth. He leaned over to pick up the backpack, let it dangle from his fingers, and then said, "What's next?"
"I don't know. That's all that Mr. Kadam told me."
He shifted me in his arms, walked over to stand in the doorway again, then peered up at the statue. He murmured, "I don't see any changes."
He held me securely while looking at the statue and, I have to admit, I totally stopped caring about what we were doing. The scratches on my arm that had been throbbing a moment ago didn't bother me at all. I let myself enjoy the feeling of being cuddled up close to his muscular chest. What girl didn't want to be swept up in the arms of a drop-dead gorgeous man? I allowed my gaze t ~ Colleen Houck

The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fairy tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament. ~ Marc Chagall

We'd purchased conservation land over a period of many years, and we were attempting to restore the native bush. We began planting eucalypts not long after we bought the property. First we planted dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands. Steve worked into the night planting trees. If the rain didn't come immediately, he would dutifully water each and every seedling. We had high hopes that one day the land would offer refuge to everything from koalas to phascogales.
"It will take a lifetime to establish these trees," he said. "But one day they will be big, they will have hollows, and there will be a place where animals can live again." Even in its raw, cattle-ravaged state, the land was heaven. The rufous bettongs were out in force every night, and the white-winged choughs flew down to keep an eye on us whenever we worked.
We had pieced together land parcels for a total of six hundred and fifty acres. This was the property Lyn and Bob were taking over in 1999. ~ Terri Irwin

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

Gym traumaramas can happen to anyone. One time, I brought a packet of papers to read while jogging on the treadmill. Right when I was in the middle of my run, I dropped them and they flew everywhere! Pages went flying all over the place and got in the way of other people working out. ~ Jenna Ushkowitz

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Stick around, though. I'm going to need all the help I can get to figure all this out."
"That's me! Mister Helpful. Captain Dependable."
"That sounds like a brand of adult diapers."
"This nickname needs some work. Lord Wonderful? The Incredible Hunk?"
"Please, for the love, go inside."
He laughed, then clomped up the steps and into the house.
"Reth," I shouted. "Reeeeeeeeth! Reth! Reth, Reth, Reth! If you don't come in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to do find David's golf clubs!"
"That tone and level of voice does nothing attractive you for, my love."
I jumped, startled, but of course Reth would be behind me, leaning heavily on the porch railing.
"You," I said, glaring. "Fix it. Now."
A look of disdain on his face, he leaned over and trailed his fingers across Lend's forehead. A single whispered word, and then . . .
Nothing.
"You liar!" I shouted, standing so abruptly that Lend rolled off my lap and down a step. As he hit the first one, color bloomed through him into his usual glamour and his eyes flew open in panic.
"He was asleep, Evelyn." Reth's lips were pursed, but I knew he was smiling gleefully on the inside.
"Lend!" I lunged forward, knocking into him, and we both rolled down the next two steps, landing in a heap on the gravel at the bottom. "You're awake!"
"Evie! I'm . . . wow, why am I so bruised?"
"Shut up," I said, grabbing his head and pulling him in for a kiss. It was freezing a ~ Kiersten White

I had one particular handbag disaster when I couldn't get into it, and when I finally did, it flew over the red carpet and was caught by 200 lenses. Not a great moment. ~ Erin O'Connor

Your dad just threw down and I just laid it out," Shy started when I didn't speak. "Now's the time to share, Tabby."
"I love you," I whispered.
"Good, but don't say that shit to me three feet away. Get the fuck over here."
I launched off on a foot, took one step and flew through the air. Shy, as he'd been doing awhile, caught me. I wrapped my limbs around him and looked down in his beautiful green eyes. "I love you," I whispered again. ~ Kristen Ashley

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the nurse's office? I know it'd be a tight fit, but it would be sort of perfect. ~ Robyn Schneider

When she rolled over, nestling her back into Daniel's chest so that he was cradling her with his right wing, her eyelids fluttered shut. Then they flew open.
She was face to face with Cam.
He was inches away, on his side, head propped on his hand, green eyes holding hers as if they were both in a trance. He opened his mouth as if to say something-
BOOM.
The room trembled like a leaf. For an instant, the air seemed to take on a strange transparency. Cam's body shimmered, both there and somehow not there, his very existence seeming to flicker.
"Timequake," Daniel said.
"A big mother," Cam agreed.
Luce sprang upright, gaping at her own body in the sleeping bag, at Daniel's hand on her knee, at Arriane, whose muffled voice called out," "I'wuzznt me," until Annabelle's wing slapped her awake. All of them were flickering before each other's eyes. Solidly present one moment, as insubstantial as ghosts the next.
The timequake had jarred loose a dimension in which they weren't even there.
The cave around them shuddered. Sand sifted down from the walls. But unlike those of Luce and her friends, the physical properties of the red rock remained fixed, as if to prove that only people-souls-were at risk of being erased. ~ Lauren Kate

I watched the shadow of our plane hastening below us across hedges and fences, rows of poplars and canals … Nowhere, however, was a single human being to be seen. No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding. One sees the places where they live and the roads that link them, one sees the smoke rising from their houses and factories, one sees the vehicles in which they sit, but one sees not the people themselves. And yet they are present everywhere upon the face of the earth, extending their dominion by the hour, moving around the honeycombs of towering buildings and tied into networks of a complexity that goes far beyond the power of any one individual to imagine, from the thousands of hoists and winches that once worked the South African diamond mines to the floors of today's stock and commodity exchanges, through which the global tides of information flow without cease. If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end, I thought, as we crossed the coastline and flew out over the jelly-green sea. ~ W.G. Sebald

The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You're crazier than the weather, Charlie. ~ Charles Simic

And then his mouth was on her, his tongue stroking in long, slow licks, curling almost unbearably at the place where pleasure pooled and strained and begged for release. She cried out, sitting up straight before he lifted his head and pressed one large hand to her soft stomach. "Lie back... let me taste you. Let me show you how good it can be. Watch. Tell me what you like. What you need."
And she did, God help her. As he licked and sucked with his perfect tongue and his wicked lips, she whispered her encouragement, learning what she wanted even as she was not sure of the end result.
More, Michael....
Her hands slid into his curls, holding him close to her.
Michael, again...
Her thighs widened, willing and wanton.
There, Michael...
Michael...
He was her world. There was nothing beyond this moment.
And then his fingers joined his tongue, and she thought she might die as he pressed more firmly, rubbed more deliberately, giving her everything for which she did not know to ask. Her eyes flew open, his name on a gasp.
His tongue moved faster, circling at the place where she needed him, and she moved, all inhibitions gone, lost to the rising, cresting pleasure... wanting nothing more than to know what lay beyond.
"Please, don't stop," she whispered.
He didn't.
With his name on her lips, she threw herself over the edge, rocking against him, pressing to him, begging for more even as he gave it to her with tongue and lip ~ Sarah MacLean

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

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!-
Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.
-Ode to Youth and Memory ~ George Meredith

If you say you've had a nervous breakdown or things aren't right mentally, people run away from you. They think you're from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,' you know. ~ Frank Bruno

Oh God how subtle he would have to be, how cunning ... No paragraph, no phrase even of the thousands the book must contain could strike a discordant note, be less than fully imagined, an entire novel's worth of thought would have to be expended on each one. His attention had only to lapse for a moment, between preposition and object, colophon and chapter heading, for dead spots to appear like gangrene that would rot the whole. Silkworms didn't work as finely or as patiently as he must, and yet boldness was all, the large stroke, the end contained in and prophesied by the beginning, the stains of his clouds infinitely various but all signifying sunrise. Unity in diversity, all that guff. An enormous weariness flew over him. The trouble with drink, he had long known, wasn't that it started up these large things but that it belittled the awful difficulties of their execution. ("Novelty") ~ John Crowley

What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. ~ Stephen King

Mum bought me �kite for my sixth birthday. It was beautiful. Snowy white with � long tail of ribbons. She
held the string, and I� ran and ran as fast as I �could, but it kept dropping to� clumsy heap on the ground. When� I got
tired Mum took over, holding it high above her head and
running and running until, all at once, �sudden wonderful gust of wind took the kite soaring high, high into the sky, so� I had to squint to see it.
"Hold on, Rosie!" Mum had called. "Hold tight!"
And �I did, gripping the string with all my might as the kite danced high up above, gleaming bright white
against the blue sky, its ribbons sparkling in the sunlight as it flew, soaring and dipping like �bird, forever pulling at the string in my hand - higher, higher - tugging to get
free.
Then� I let go.The string snapped from my grip and was gone.
Mum raced after it,but it was too fast,soaring up,up and away, higher than the trees. She scooped me up in �hug and told me it was all right, she'd buy me another one. But� I didn't want another one. That was my kite,and
it was free. I'd let it go.It'd wanted so much to be free that I just couldn't hold on, couldn't hold it down.� I smiled as I� watched it whirl away - above the trees, above the birds, above the clouds, sparkling into the heavens, dancing free.
It was the most beautiful thing I �have ever seen. ~ Katie Dale

I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and the endless waves over which it flew. Higher and higher it went and the sky turned to silver and then gradually the silver faded and the sky went dark. The darkness of evening nothing to fear, really, nothing. Blessed darkness. But it was falling gradually and inexorably over nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great wasteland that was the world. Empty caves, empty sands, empty sea. ~ Anne Rice

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport's location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

What's the first image that comes to mind when you think of a mental hospital? Jack Nicholson in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' right? We need to change that perception, and places like this one are doing that. ~ Deborah Norville