One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Quotes

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.

If you say you’ve had a nervous breakdown or things aren’t right mentally, people run away from you. They think you’re from ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,’ you know.

He knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you’re not bothered.

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.

You’re making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You’re not crazy the way they think. Yes…I see.

You can’t really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

What’s the first image that comes to mind when you think of a mental hospital? Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ right? We need to change that perception, and places like this one are doing that.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is a movie that I just find flawless. Jack Nicholson… I just saw ‘The Shining’ again the other day; he’s so brilliant. He’s such a brilliant actor, just unbelievable.

I had those kind of parents where I watched all of these very sophisticated movies: ‘Five Easy Pieces’, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’

In terms of popular cinema, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is as near perfection as I can think of.

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

But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.

They can’t tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.