He who walks out of step hears another drum.
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.
He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he'd let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit.
No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.
I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
It's fogging a little, but I won't slip off and hide in it. No...never again...
He's got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he's got pretty hands.
There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of.
I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.
I knew even before we got it rolling that this here was the type asshole that subscribed to magazines like the Nation and Atlantic and probably even read them, and that I didn't stand a snowball's chance against him in an argument; but I was too oiled too keep my mouth shut.
The Republican consciousness has no integrity and it falls apart once you check it out. If you're a Christian, why would you want to fry this dude?
Ocean, Ocean I'll beat you in the end.
God looks out for fools and niggers.
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. . . .
Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.
Sometimes reading the same page over and over, until one sleepy afternoon something clicked, like a lock unlocking, and she saw those printed doors swing open on a vast house of words.
While his relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors-for all of us to dream ourselves into.
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's fall coming, I kept thinking, fall coming; just like that was the strangest thing ever happened. Fall. Right outside here it was spring a while back, then it was summer, and now it's fall-that's sure a curious idea.
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...
You can make a mark across the night with the tip of an embered stick, and you can actually see it fixed in its finity. You can be absolutely sure of its treacherous impermanence. And that is all.
I used to think we were going to win in the '60s. Nixon went out and I thought we won.
The Grateful Dead are our religion. This is a religion that doesn't pay homage to the God that all the other religions pay homage to.
Rany, nawet chinscy komunisci niejednego by sie mogli od siostry nauczyc!
To hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.
It's the truth. Even if it didn't happen.
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.
He knows that 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.
Chang! With light and sound and numbers round and round in a whirlwind, and maybe you win with what you end up with and maybe you lose and have to play again. Pay the man for another spin, son, pay the man.
And becomes aware of her image once more, vaguely reflected in the dirty attic window: what does it mean, all this concern about our images? It means this is the only way we ever see ourselves; looking out, at others, reflected through cobwebs from an attic window.
I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it. I'm tired. I'm give out trying. You got chances. I had so many insults I was born dead. You got it easy. I was born dead an' life was hard. I'm tired. I'm tired out talking and standing up. I been dead fifty-five years.
When a guy's getting screwed he's got a right to holler. And we've been damn well screwed.
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.
Little of God, then a little of ghosts, is that it, bub? as though our unfortunate argument were forgotten. Well . . . keep a tight hold on it.
And like: Why should one want to wake up dead anyway? If the glorious birth-to-death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have . . . if our grand and exhilarating Fight of Life is such a tragically short little scrap anyway, compared to the eons of rounds before and after—then why should one want to relinquish even a few precious seconds of it?
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.
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 was actually going out of the hospital with two whores on a fishing boat; I had to keep saying it over and over to myself to believe it.
Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier.
But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.
I want to touch him because I'm one of these queers!
To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret.
He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.
You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted.
I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind....
But he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
Néha el is felejtem, milyen csodákat tud tenni a nevetés.
He had made his trip without quite realizing it.
