Variant: 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.
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 25
Context: 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 have to keep recycling yourself.”
Source: Invisible Monsters
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Chuck Palahniuk 555
American novelist, essayist 1962Related quotes
“You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.”
Source: A is for Alibi
“What you keep to yourself you lose, what you give away, you keep forever.”
“You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, and move on."
Homer Simpson”
“Keep yourself to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
Variant: For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
Source: 1984