He had come to life for maybe a minute to try to tell us something, something none of us cared to listen to or tried to understand, and the effort had drained him dry.
They’ve still got their problems, just like all of us. They’re still sick men in lots of ways. But at least there’s that: they are sick men now. No more rabbits, Mack. Maybe they can be well men someday. I can’t say.
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.
Ratched shall line us all against the wall, where we’ll face the terrible maw of a muzzle-loading shotgun which she has loaded with Miltowns! Thorazines! Libriums! Stelazines! And with a wave of her sword, blooie! Tranquilize all of us completely out of existence.
Nobody’s gonna convince me I can’t do something till I try it.” – McMurphy.
Then old Pete was on his feet. “I’m tired!” was what he shouted, a strong, angry copper tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before. Everyone hushed. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish hollering to shame.
And the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in.
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.
I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. 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.
But in spite of her efforts to stop the words she can feel some of the need getting through: he doesn’t need me that much, he couldn’t –.
Besides, there are some things that can’t be the truth even if they did happen.
In the fall when they burn the stubble off the fields the sun gets this dusty hazy color, and the mare’s-tail clouds whipping along near Wakonda Head look like goldenrod bent over by the wind. It’s always real pretty. You can almost hear it ring in the sky.
Now I don’t know what I love any more. I don’t know where the thing I make-pretend leaves off and the thing that’s really there starts up.
She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel – tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can’t tell which.
In the deepening sky where the spearpoint firs scratch the clouds, already a moon – like a cast-off paring from the setting sun. This is Hank’s bell, too.
And crying doesn’t always mean need.
And we are all surrounded by that skin, and he’s trying to show us some beauty in this condition.
The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.
He had made his trip without quite realizing it.
When a guy’s getting screwed he’s got a right to holler. And we’ve been damn well screwed.