Melanie > Melanie's Quotes

“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. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“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 them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it. ”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES!”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“This world . . . belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf is the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, 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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“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”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot. ”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. 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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“He knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side of things.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“The world news might not be therapeutic.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“They wouldn't be so cocky if they knew what me and the moon have going.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving 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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Take what you can use and let the rest go by.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“To hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“And then some guy wandering as lost as you would all of a sudden be right before your eyes, his face bigger and clearer than you ever saw a man’s face before in your life. Your eyes were working so hard to see in that fog that when something did come in sight every detail was ten times as clear as usual, so clear both of you had to look away. When a man showed up you didn’t want to look at his face and he didn’t want to look at yours, because it’s painful to see somebody so clear that it’s like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely. 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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“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.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy, you should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razorblade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness till what little dignity you got left is gone and you shrink up to nothing from humiliation, I can’t do anything about that, either.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“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 have been me.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“It's fogging a little, but I won't slip off and hide in it. No...never again...”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Being crazy isn't enough.”
― Dr. Seuss

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
― Albert Einstein

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels

“Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore