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46d8e7d
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The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose red. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly agains the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence: when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying a..
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Ken Kesey |
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bb817b9
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But the new guy is different, and the Acutes can see it, different from anybody been coming on this ward for the past ten years, different from anybody they ever met outside. He's just as vulnerable, maybe, but the Combine didn't get him.
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Ken Kesey |
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a3d620d
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But I remember one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf, it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.
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reality-of-life
psychology
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Ken Kesey |
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1a99c70
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The river split for the jump of a red-gilled silver salmon, then circled to mark the spot where it fell. Spoonbills shoveled at the crimson mud in the shallows, and dowitchers jumped from cattail to cattail, frantically crying "Kleek! Kleek!" as though the thin reeds were as hot as the pokers they resembled."
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Ken Kesey |
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020e72c
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They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.
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Ken Kesey |
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f1ced93
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He's safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works pretty fair.
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Ken Kesey |
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c4b2bfe
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Most merciful God, accept these two poor sinners into your arms. And keep the doors ajar for the coming of the rest of us, because you are witnessing the end, the absolute, irrevocable, fantastic end. I've finally realized what is happening. It is our last fling. We are doomed henceforth. Must screw our courage to the sticking point and face up to our impending fate. We [255] shall be all of us shot at dawn. One hundred cc's apiece. Mis..
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Ken Kesey |
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cdc63cb
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He who- what was it?- walks out of step, hears another drum
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Ken Kesey (Author) |
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21dfe2a
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A Man Is Known By The Mice He Keeps
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Ken Kesey |
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092a33c
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she likes a rigged game.
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Ken Kesey |
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8099a9f
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Juicy fruit
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Ken Kesey |
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8ff9a1b
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Which is just another way of blaming, and perhaps the best way, because there is solace and a certain stoical peace in blaming everything on the rain, and then blaming something as uncontrollable as the rain on something as indifferent as the Arm of the Lord. Because nothing can be done about the rain except blaming. And if nothing can be done about it, why get yourself in a sweat about it?
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rain
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Ken Kesey |
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aff49e6
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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.
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Ken Kesey |
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8636f6a
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Papa says if you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.
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Ken Kesey |
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f3b2db2
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I'd see him do things that didn't fit with his face or hands, things like painting a picture at OT with real paints on a blank paper with no lines or numbers anywhere on it to tell him where to paint, or like writing letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand. How could a man who looked like him paint pictures or write letters to people, or be upset and worried like I saw him once when he got a letter back?
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Ken Kesey |
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8e93c35
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She walked right on past, ignoring him just like she chose to ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized badges of femininity, just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that's weak and of the flesh.
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Ken Kesey |
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861ce66
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I don't think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I'm not able to give you those. Not for the others, anyway. For myself? Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was-- shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general world than the other one. I indulg..
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society
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Ken Kesey |
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3c069dc
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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.
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Ken Kesey |
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550884a
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Down through the druid wood I saw Wildman join with Cleaver Creek, put on weight, exchange his lean and hungry look for one of more well-fed fanaticism. Then came Chichamoonga, the Indian Influence, whooping along with its banks war-painted with lupine and columbine. Then Dog Creek, then Olson Creek, then Weed Creek. Across a glacier-raked gorge I saw Lynx Falls spring hissing and spitting from her lair of fire-bright vine maple, claw the a..
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Ken Kesey |
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f89b9e5
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Maybe he couldn't understand why we weren't able to laugh yet, but he knew you can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things. In fact, he worked so hard at pointing out the funny side of things that I was wondering a little if maybe he was blind to the other side, if maybe he wasn't able to see what it was that parched laughter deep inside your stomach. Maybe the guys weren't able to see it either, just feel the pressures of t..
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Ken Kesey |
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1f4fa49
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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.
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nurse-ratched
mcmurphy
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Ken Kesey |
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3ddba2e
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It's the truth. Even if it didn't happen.
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Ken Kesey |
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68ea7be
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I'd wander for days in the fog, scared I'd never see another thing, then there'd be that door, opening to show me the mattress padding on the other side to stop out the sounds, the men standing in a line like zombies among shiny copper wires and tubes pulsing light, and the bright scrape of arcing electricity. I'd take my place in the line and wait my turn at the table. The table shaped like a cross, with shadows of a thousand murdered men ..
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Ken Kesey |
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e3a145e
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The game goes round and round, to the rattle of dice and the shuffle of play money.
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Ken Kesey |
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10904cd
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The best of all possible cages.' Ben stepped back to regard the job with a sad smile. 'What more can one ask?
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Ken Kesey |
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2a0e657
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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 rabbitswe'd be rabbits wherever we werewe're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the n..
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rabbits
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Ken Kesey |
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e5e9512
|
Papa says if you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.
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Ken Kesey |
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38f7764
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We are the culture. All those people that are doing those dumb TV things and promoting hate...that's the 'counter'culture.
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Ken Kesey Brian David Johnson |
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b969150
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I'm accustomed to being top man. I been a bull goose catskinner for every gyppo logging operation in the Northwest and bull goose gambler all the way from Korea, was even bull goose pea weeder on that pea farm at Pendleton -- so I figure if I'm bound to be a loony, then I'm bound to be a stompdown dadgum good one.
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Ken Kesey |
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cdf612b
|
He's like an old clock the won't tell time but won't stop neither with the hands bend out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm rusted silent, an old worthless clock that keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.
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old-clock
rusted
meaningless
silent
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Ken Kesey |
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4a2fe29
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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.
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safety
mental-illness
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Ken Kesey |
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4ab9f1e
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A bluetick hound bays out there in the fog, running scared and lost because he can't see. No tracks on the ground but the one's he's making, and he sniffs in every direction with his cold red-rubber nose and picks up no scent but his own fear, fear burning down into him like steam.
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Ken Kesey |
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5a26318
|
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."
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one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-s-nest
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Ken Kesey |
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ac9173a
|
I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind....
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mind
one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-s-nest
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Ken Kesey |
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5ed4d0d
|
there was nothing, not a thing! about the country that made a man feel Big And Important. If anything it made a man feel dwarfed, and about as important as one of the fish-Indians living down on the clamflats. Important? Why, there was something about the whole blessed country that made a soul feel whipped before he got started.
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Ken Kesey |
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55f908e
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If somebody'd of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations, they'd of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons.
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Ken Kesey |
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c3ba936
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One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?" [
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limitations
writing
inventiveness
dullness
familiarity
craft
creative-process
knowledge
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Ken Kesey |
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8bcd564
|
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.
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mcmurphy
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Ken Kesey |
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463615f
|
She was fifteen years old, going on thirty-five, Doc, and she told me she was eighteen, she was very willing, I practically had to take to sewing my pants shut. Between you and me, uh, she might have been fifteen, but when you get that little red beaver right up there in front of you, I don't think it's crazy at all and I don't think you do either. No man alive could resist that, and that's why I got into jail to begin with. And now they're..
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Ken Kesey |
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7ae4e94
|
They're out there...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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Ken Kesey |
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e6e1f13
|
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. . . .
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Ken Kesey |
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5821f89
|
When a man showed up you didn't want to look at his face and he 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 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 may be, or you could relax and lose yourse..
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reality
life
truth
inspirational
decision-making
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Ken Kesey |
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60e1a2a
|
The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to ..
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Ken Kesey |
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ec24e93
|
Ia ikh videl ogromnoe kolichestvo, starykh i molodykh, muzhchin i zhenshchin. Videl ikh i na ulitse, i u nikh doma -- liudei, kotorye pytaiutsia sdelat' tebia slabym, zastavit' sledovat' ikh pravilam, zastavit' zhit' tak, kak oni etogo ot tebia khotiat. I luchshii sposob zastavit' tebia podchinit'sia -- udarit', gde vsego bol'nei. U tebia kogda-nibud' triaslis' podzhilki pri skandale, priiatel'? Lishaesh'sia khladnokroviia, razve net? Net n..
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Ken Kesey |