Ken Kesey Quotes
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The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.
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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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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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Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.
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You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.
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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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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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But just as soon as we got to the pool he said he did wish something mighta been done, though, and dove into the water.
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But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?
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Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.
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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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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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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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Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
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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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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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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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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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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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One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
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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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I got high on psychedelics before I was ever drunk. I never smoked. Then LSD came by. And to me it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened... And, of course, the best drugs ever were manufactured by the government.
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Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.
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Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.