1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Important Quotes
from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

2. “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.”
-Chief Bromden
-Asserting himself as the narrator and the author of the book. He is telling us the story and we are hearing his voice even though he has been quite for a very long time.
-Acknowledging that he is an unreliable narrator.

3. “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it—with chickens—is to clip blinders on them. So’s they can’t see.”
-McMurphy
-Describing his view of the group meetings. The patients are meant to destroy one another to keep each other in check and under Ratched’s power.

4. “Even the best-behaved Admission is bound to need some work to swing into routine, and, also, you never can tell when just that certain one might come in who’s free enough to foul things up right and left, really make a hell of a mess and constitute a threat to the whole smoothness of the outfit. And, like I explain, the Big Nurse gets real put out if anything keeps her outfit from running smooth.”
-Chief Bromden
-Perspective of how Nurse Ratched controls the ward and how no one in the ward is safe. Each and everyone, at some point, will need to be “fixed.”
-**Feeds into the theme of women as castrators as it is Nurse Ratched that is doing the correcting and that often include the emasculation of the patients.

5. “Except the sun, on these three strangers, is all of a sudden way the hell brighter than usual and I can see the seams where they’re put together. And, almost, see the apparatus inside them take the words I just said and try to fit the words in here and there, this place and that, and when they find the words don’t have any place ready-made where they’ll fit, the machinery disposes of the words like they weren’t even spoken.”
-Chief Bromden
-Reflecting on a time that governments officials came to purchase the tribes land. At 10, this is when his perspectives of people changed. Those who do their jobs without thought or concern for others are machines acting without consciousness.
-Feeds into the theme of manipulation as these officials, or people in roles of authority, disregard the human condition.

6. “And that afternoon in the meeting when Cheswick said that everybody’d agreed that there should be some kind of showdown on the cigarette situations, saying, ‘I ain’t no little kid to have cigarettes kept from like cookies! We want something done about it, ain’t that right Mac?’ and waited for McMurphy to back him up, all he got was silence.”
-Cheswick
-Reflecting on how the ward patients are treated like children who have to ask a parent figure to having something that is theirs.
-Reflecting of the theme, women as castrators, as the nurses do not allow the men to carry their own cigarettes. They force them to ask for them.

7. “The loud talk and laughter swirled around the nurse
“The loud talk and laughter swirled around the nurse. She looked from Billy and the girl to the bunch of us behind her. The enamel-and-plastic face was caving in. she shut her eyes and strained to calm her trembling, concentrating. She knew this was it, her back to the wall. When her eyes opened again, they were very small and still.
‘What worried me, Bill,’ she said – I could hear the change in her voice – ‘is how your poor mother is going to take this.’ She got the response she was after. Billy flinched and put his hand to his cheek like he’d burned with acid.”
-Nurse Ratched
-She found Billy with Candy Starr in bed. The Nurse was thrown by finding the two together and needed to put Billy back in his place.