While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water - laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows 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. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing…

'What worries me, Billy,' she said - I could hear the change in her voice - 'is how your mother is going to take this.'

Alla you! Quit bugging me, goddammit!

I thought you were kidding. I thought it was a joke, I even wrote it down in my diary. 'Veronica had a very funny joke today.' I laughed at it later that night.

I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of autho…

It's no use crying over spilt evils. It's better to mop them up laughing.