“I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.”

— Ken Kesey, book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound." by Ken Kesey?

Ken Kesey photo

Ken Kesey103

novelist 1935–2001

Related quotes

“[After]
Burnt to the dust, an ashy heap
Was every cottage round;—
I listened, but I could not hear
One single human sound:”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Glencoe from The London Literary Gazette (12th July 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“All day long they work so hard
Till the sun is goin' down.
Working on the highways and byways
And wearing, wearing a frown.
You hear them moanin' their lives away.
Then you hear somebody say:"That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang.
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang."”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Chain Gang
Song lyrics, Singles

“All memories fade away in the end. Then, only dreams are left. And because they are all we have, we confide our life’s worries to them.”

Philippe Forest (1962) French writer

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't see them ever fading.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 23, p. 280

“Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 162

“Why did happy memories fade and blur until one could scarcely recall them at all, while horrible memories seemed to retain their blinding clarity and painful sharpness?”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Almost Heaven

“The very saddest sound in all my memory was burned into my awareness at age five on my uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin. A cow had given birth to a beautiful male calf. The mother was allowed to nurse her calf but for a single night. On the second day after birth, my uncle took the calf from the mother and placed him in the veal pen in the barn—only ten yards away, in plain view of the mother. The mother cow could see her infant, smell him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse him. The heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour, for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant and painful auditory memories I carry in my brain. Since that age, whenever I hear anyone postulate that animals cannot really feel emotions, I need only to replay that torturous sound in my memory of that mother cow crying her bovine heart out to her infant. Mother's love knows no species barriers, and I believe that all people who are vegans in their hearts and souls know that to be true.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook (Lowell House, 1998), pp. 39-40.

“I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
And accrue what I hear into myself… and let sound contribute toward me.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

Related topics