Ken Kesey Quotes

There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus.

Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.

Now, you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

I've been to too many Dead concerts. There've been smokin' holes where my memory used to be.

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.

Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. It is the deepest faith we have, and the unbeliever- the blasphemer, the dissenter- will stimulate in us the most righteous of furies.

I've found psychedelics to be keys to worlds that have always existed, that have to be talked about.

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.

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.

The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through. ... And when the Big Nurse...came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage... an outrage..." at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that's a toilet bowl...a TOILET bowl.

A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance . . . like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care about anything but himself and his dying.

We think we’re in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

turns me on so loud it's like no sound, everybody yelling at me hands over their ears from behind a glass wall, faces working around in talk circles but no sound from the mouths. my sound soaks up all other sound.

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.

The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

Since we don't know where we're going, we have to stick together in case someone gets there.

You don't plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbor's shovel.

The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

I believe that a man should be... as big as he feels it in him to be!

To be just without being mad (and the madder you get the madder you get), to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical... smoke grass.

You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.

He was in his chair in the corner, resting a second before he came out for the next round -- in a long line of next rounds. The thing he was fighting, you couldn't whip it for good. All you could do was keep on whipping it, till you couldn't come out anymore and somebody else had to take your place.

If this glorious birth to death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have ..if our grand 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?

I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil ? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it ? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.

What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs.

Don't say it...I've seen too many loves sundered by too much needless honesty.

Then - as he was talking - a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do.

There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong. . .

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

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.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures being real guys.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

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

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.

Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

What can you pay for the way a man lives? What can you pay for what a man is?

When you're around the whole Dead scene, they're there as a tribal thing; they're there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.

What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

To hell with facts! We need stories.

No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?

But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.