Ken Kesey - One flew over the cuckoo nest
“No… The flag is… Ah-mer-ica. America is… the plum. The peach. The wah-ter-mel-on. America is… the gumdrop. The pump-kin seed. America is… tell-ah-vision.”
“Hell, are you birds telling me I can’t lift that dinky little gizmo?”
“That’s the Shock Shop I was telling you about some time back, my friend, the EST, Electro-Shock Therapy. Those fortunate souls in there are being given a free trip to the moon… No, on second thought, it isn’t completely free. You pay for the service with brain cells instead of money, and everyone has simply billions of brain cells on deposit. You won’t miss a few.”
“Y’know, she might be right, Doc; look at the good that few measly volts have done to me. Maybe if we could doubled the charge I could pick up channel eight, like Martini; I’m tried of layin’ in bed hallucinatin’ nothing but channel four with the news and weather.”
“Don’t you mamamamurphy me, Billy Boy. It’s too late to back out now. You’ll pull through. I’ll tell you what: I got five dollars here says you burn that woman down; all right?”
“These things don’t happen,” Harding said to the girl solemnly.”These things are fantasies you lie awake at night dreaming up and then are afraid to tell your analyst.”
“it’s the soo-pervisor, come to fire my black ass.”
“till she gave a squeal and we heard old Colonel Matterson roar, “The pillow is … a horse! – and come whisking out of the dorm right behind her in his wheelchair.”
“It isn’t happening. It’s a collaboration of Kafka and Mark Twain and Martini.”
“Good morning, Miss Ratched,” Billy said, not even making any move to get up and button his pajamas. He took the girl’s hand in his and grinned. “This is Candy.”
– A woman like this. A cheap! Low! Painted…
– “Courtesan” Harding suggested. “Jezebel?” The nurse turned and tried to nail him with her eyes, but he just went on. “Not Jezebel? No?” He scratched his head in thought. “How about Salome? She’s notoriously evil. Perhaps ‘dame’ is the word you want. Well, I’m just trying to help.”
“Was I you, Chief, I’d breeze my tail outa here. Yessir. I tell you what. You leave outa here, and I’ll say I saw him up and moving around after you lift and cover you that way. That’s the best idea, don’t you think?”
“I’d like to see what they’ve been doing since the government tried to buy their right to be Indians”
“Wait just a shake, honey; what are these two little red capsules in here with my vitamin?”
…
“It’s just medication, Mr. Taber, good for you. Down it goes, now.”
“… hist wife was extremely well endowed in the bosom and that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street.”
“Rape?” The doctor perks up.
“Statutory, with a girl of -”
“Whoa. Couldn’t make that stick,” McMurphy says to the doctor. “Girl wouldn’t testify.”
“With a child of fifteen.”
“Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.” “A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, repeated entry, the record states -”
…
“Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you” – he leans forward with an elbow on a knee, lowering his voice to the doctor across the room – “that little hustler would of actually burnt me to a frazzle by the time she reached legal sixteen. She got to where she was tripping me and beating me to the floor.”
“I’ve heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forward and backwards -”
“Hold it, Harding, I’m not up on all this shop talk.”
“And I damn well don’t want to have some old fiend of a nurse after me with three thousand volts.
“Okay, All right,” McMurphy rubs his palms together. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’. You birds seem to think you got quite the champ in there, don’t you? Quite the – what did you call her? – sure, impregnable woman. What I want to know is how many of you are dead sure enough to put a little money on her?”
“Stand back, sissies, you’re using my oxigen”
“The hell with that other slum. And we’ll take it at three cents off because we’re goddamned government-sponsored expedition.”