Ken Kesey Quotes
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I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference.... To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.
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I've been to too many Dead concerts. There've been smokin' holes where my memory used to be.
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I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
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I have known a lot of people to go down and out - they kill themselves with alcohol or downers. But I've never known anybody to go up and out.
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Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.
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Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.
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The Grateful Dead are our religion. This is a religion that doesn't pay homage to the God that all the other religions pay homage to.
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Tricker the Squirrel is the best piece I ever wrote. It's intricate.
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I watched and tried to figure out what he would have done. I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.
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There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place - then it won't make a damn.
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When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.
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Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.
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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.
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We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.
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But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?
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Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower. Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice!And you tell Mr. Harding right back - he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low - that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.
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Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . . come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . . .
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NEVER GIVE A INCH!
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Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
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Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.
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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.
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What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.
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Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.
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One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.