Ken Kesey Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.

Ken Kesey
Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

Ken Kesey
There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.

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

Ken Kesey
You can't really separate the mask and the look from the story and the performance. Just hanging a mask on the wall makes it a piece of art in the museum, but if you put it on and use it as part of a story, then the story comes alive; the mask comes alive.

Ken Kesey
Jack London had class. He wasn't a very good writer, but he had tremendous class. And nobody had more class than Melville. To do what he did in Moby-Dick, to tell a story and to risk putting so much material into it. If you could weigh a book, I don't know any book that would be more full.

Ken Kesey
Almost every writer I know drinks to ease the burden of being out on the cliffs, so to speak. But writing under the influence of drugs is a little like a plumber trying to fix the pipes without being able to work the wrench.

Ken Kesey
It's impossible for me to write on LSD—there are more important things to think about. Hunter Thompson can do it, but I can't. It's like diving down to look at coral reefs. You can't write about what you've seen until you're back up in the boat.

Ken Kesey
This is just shit. It's happening. No blame. Happening and on the rise it would appear. What can we do to delay it? Probably zilch. To stop it? Likely less. But to survive it? Now that sounds more promising. There is evidence of bad shit having been survived before. Ancient Advice Left in cave by Wise French Caveman: "When Bigbad Shit come, no run scream hide. Try paint picture of it on wall. Drum to it. Sing to it. Dance to it. This give you handle on it." So Twister is my try.

Ken Kesey
This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

Ken Kesey
More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear face to face.

Ken Kesey
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.

Ken Kesey
One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Ken Kesey
Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?

Ken Kesey
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.

Ken Kesey
All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.

Ken Kesey
I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it.... I'm tired.

Ken Kesey
Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.

Ken Kesey
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.

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

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

Ken Kesey
I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.

Ken Kesey
Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more—let me see—more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps... as prehistoric ferns grow from bathtub planters.

Ken Kesey
When people ask me what I think is my best work, it's the bus. There're lots of books, but there's only one bus.

Ken Kesey
Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart... the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"

Ken Kesey
His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't lift, something everybody knows he can't lift. But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.

Ken Kesey
- he's finished with that; it's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.

Ken Kesey
The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon

Ken Kesey
"What worries me, Billy," she said — I could hear the change in her voice — "is how your mother is going to take this."

Ken Kesey
You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself

Ken Kesey