Mcmurphy Quotes

There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.

Then—as he was talking—a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected 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...

McMurphy tied a chunk of meat to each end of a four-foot string, tossed it into the air, and sent two squawking birds wheeling off, "Till death do them part.

Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower. Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice! And you tell Mr. Harding right back — he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low — that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.

Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.

She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted--it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.

The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through. ... And when the Big Nurse...came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage... an outrage..." at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that's a toilet bowl...a TOILET bowl.

Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin' myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation.

While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh 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 bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses 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 know's there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend 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.

I will be a sonofabitch if he ain't in here at eleven-thirty at night, fartin' around in the dark with a pair of scissors and a paper sack.

I see he had his shorts on under the towel all along. I think for a fact that she'd rather he'd of been stark naked under that towel than had on those shorts. She's glaring at those big white whales leaping round on his shorts in pure wordless outrage.

Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin' myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back. There's liable to be crackin' cement and flying steel. Get the women and kids someplace safe. Stand back. . . .

Hell of a life. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Puts a man in one confounded bind, I’d say.” McMurphy

Mr. McMurphy... my friend... I'm not a chicken, I'm a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don't misunderstand me, we're not in here because we are rabbitsーwe'd be rabbits wherever we wereーwe're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.

(Randle McMurphy) Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power.

Nobody's gonna convince me I can't do something till I try it." -- McMurphy

Thursday,” McMurphy says again. “Looooo,” yells that guy upstairs. “That’s

He shakes the hands of Wheelers and Walkers and Vegetables, shakes hands that he has to pick up out of laps like picking up dead birds, mechanical birds, wonders of tiny bones and wires that have run down and fallen. Shakes hands with everybody he comes to except Big George the water freak, who grins and shies back from that unsanitary hand, so McMurphy just salutes him and says to his own right hand as he walks away, “Hand, how do you suppose that old fellow knew all the evil you been into?

It’s like… that big red hand of McMurphy’s is reaching into the fog and dropping down and dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them blinking into the open. First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years.

McMurphy, goading, coaxing, leading everybody on to give themselves a little bigger movie, a little action, moving the plot from out of deadass snug harbor. There’s a hell of a scene going for you, bub, out here in Edge City. But don’t even stop there—

Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange diminishing effect on works of fantasy (of course there are exceptions; The Wizard of Oz is an example which springs immediately to mind). In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly. I've always thought Robert Duvall would make a splendid Randall Flagg, but I've heard people suggest such people as Clint Eastwood, Bruce Dern and Christopher Walken. They all sound good, just as Bruce Springsteen would seem to make an interesting Larry Underwood, if ever he chose to try acting (and, based on his videos, I think he would do very well ... although my personal choice would be Marshall Crenshaw). But in the end, I think it's best for Stu, Larry, Glen, Frannie, Ralph, Tom Cullen, Lloyd, and that dark fellow to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of the imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken Kesey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad ... but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

What do you think?” Harding says. McMurphy starts. “She’s got one hell of a set of chabobs,” is all he can think of. “Big as Old Lady Ratched’s.” “I didn’t mean physically, my friend, I mean what do you—” “Hell’s bells, Harding!” McMurphy yells suddenly. “I don’t know what to think! What do you want out of me? A marriage counsellor? All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down. I know what you want me to think; you want me to feel sorry for you, to think she’s a real bitch. Well, you didn’t make her feel like any queen either. 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!” And

I still had my own notions. How McMurphy was a giant come out of the sky to save us from the combine that was networking the land with copper wire and crystal

you're not going to pull that hen house shit now, are you?" --RP McMurphy

We have weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in this hospital is entirely up to us. Now, if there is nothing else…

The hell with that in mass business,” McMurphy says. “I’m tired of looking at you bunch of old ladies; when me and Cheswick bust outta here I think by God I’m gonna nail the door shut behind me. You guys better stay behind; your mamma probably wouldn’t let you cross the street.

Nadie se queja de la niebla. Ahora ya sé por qué: aunque resulte molesta, permite hundirse en ella y sentirse seguro. Es lo que McMurphy no comprende, que queramos estar seguros. Sigue intentando hacernos salir de la niebla, ponernos al descubierto, donde sería fácil atraparnos.

It's gonna burn me just that way, finally telling about all this, about the hospital, and her, and the guys- and about McMurphy. I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking about it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

You’ve—it seems—no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?” “McMurphy, Doc.” “Oh? But I thought—the nurse was saying—” He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.” “It’s okay, Doc. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I’ve known some people inclined to do that.

The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction—anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and then reads Ken Kesey’s novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson’s face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad … but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

It’s gonna burn me just that way, finally telling about all this, about the hospital, and her, and the guys—and about McMurphy. 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.

It started slow and pumped itself full, swelling the men bigger and bigger. I watched, part of them, laughing with them—and somehow not with them. I was off the boat, blown off the water and skating the wind with those balck birds, high above myself, and I could look down and see myself and the rest of the guys, see the boat rocking there in the middle of those diving birds, see McMurphy surrounded by his dozen people, and watch them, us, swining a laughter that rang out on the water in ever-widening circles, farther and father, until it crashed up on beaches all over the coast, on beaches all over all coasts, in wave after wave after wave.

Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange diminishing effect on works of fantasy... In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly... But in the end, I think it's perhaps best for [the characters] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction―anyone who has ever seen 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and then reads Ken Kesey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad . . . but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

But me, I know why. I heard him talk to the lifeguard. He’s finally getting cagey, is all. The way Papa finally did when he came to realize that he couldn’t beat that group from town who wanted the government to put in the dam because of the money and the work it would bring, and because it would get rid of the village: Let that tribe of fish Injuns take their sink and their two hundred thousand dollars the government is paying them and go some place else with it! Papa had done the smart thing signing the papers; there wasn’t anything to gain by bucking it. The government would of got it anyhow, sooner or later; this way the tribe would get paid good. It was the smart thing. McMurphy was doing the smart thing. I would see that. He was giving in because it was the smartest thing to do, not because of any of these other reasons the Acutes were making up. He didn’t say so, but I knew and I told myself it was the smart thing to do. I told myself that over and over: It’s safe. Like hiding. it’s the smart thing to do nobody could say and different. I know what he’s doing.

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 as 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?” He lets go McMurphy’s hand and leans back and crosses his legs, takes another long pull off the cigarette. He pulls the cigarette from his thin crack of a smile, and the laugh starts up again—eee-eee-eee, like a nail coming out of a plank. “Mr. McMurphy… my friend… I’m not a chicken, I’m a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, we’re not in here because we are rabbits—we’d be rabbits wherever we were—we’re all in here because we can’t adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.

Há um morcego de papel da festa das bruxas pendurado num cordão acima de sua cabeça; ele levanta o braço e dá um piparote no morcego, que começa a girar. - Dia de outono bem agradável - continua ele. Fala um pouco do jeito como papai costumava falar, voz alta, selvagem mesmo, mas não se parece com papai; papai era um índio puro de Columbia - um chefe - e duro e brilhante como uma coronha de arma. Esse cara é ruivo, com longas costeletas vermelhas, e um emaranhado de cachos saindo por baixo do boné, está precisando de dar um corte no cabelo há muito tempo, e é tão robusto quanto papai era alto, queixo, ombros e peitos largos, um largo sorriso diabólico, muito branco e é duro de uma maneira diferente do que papai era, mais ou menos do jeito que uma bola de beisebol é dura sob o couro gasto. Uma cicatriz lhe atravessa o nariz e uma das maçãs do rosto, o luga em que alguém o acertou numa briga, e os pontos ainda estão no corte. Ele fica de pé ali, esperando, e, quando ninguém toma a iniciativa de lhe responder alguma coisa, começa a rir. Ninguém é capaz de dizer exatamente por que ele ri; não há nada de engraçado acontecendo. Mas não é da maneira como aquele Relações Públicas ri, é um riso livre e alto que sai da sua larga boca e se espalha em ondas cada vez maiores até ir de encontro às paredes por toda a ala. Não como aquele riso do gordo Relações Públicas . Este som é verdadeiro. Eu me dou conta de repente de que é a primeira gargalhada que ouço há anos. Ele fica de pé, olhando para nós, balançando-se para trás nas botas , e ri e ri. Cruza os dedos sobre a barriga sem tirar os polegares dos bolsos. Vejo como suas mãos são grandes e grossas. Todo mundo na ala, pacientes, pessoal e o resto, está pasmo e abobalhado diante dele e da sua risada. Não há qualquer movimento para faze-lo parar, nenhuma iniciativa para dizer alguma coisa. Ele então interrompe a risada, por algum tempo, e vem andando, entrando na enfermaria. Mesmo quando não está rindo, aquele ressoar do seu riso paira a sua volta, da mesma maneira com o som paira em torno de um grande sino que acabou de ser tocado - está em seus olhos, na maneira como sorri, na maneira como fala. [1] - Meu nome é McMurphy, companheiros, R. P. McMurphy, e sou um jogador idiota. - Ele pisca o olho e canta um pedacinho de uma canção : - .... " e sempre eu ponho ... meu dinheiro ... na mesa " - e ri de novo.

It made no sense, her showing up at McMurphy’s like that. Atlanta was a big city.

Half man, half Randle McMurphy!

Noche de brujas

Noviembre

Navidad

Hey, Willie. Let's throw a cat on the barbie.

I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.

Six bells and all’s well. Steady as she goes. Hit the deck. Drop your cocks and grab your socks.