Ken Kesey - Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)

12 Sourced Quotes

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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
Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range... come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River...

Ken Kesey
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."

Ken Kesey
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...

Ken Kesey
For there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced, a last inviolable stronghold that can never be taken, whatever the attack; your vote can be taken, you name, you innards, or even your life, but that last stonghold can only be surrendered. And to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love.

Ken Kesey
The best of all possible cages.' Ben stepped back to regard the job with a sad smile. 'What more can one ask?

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
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
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
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
Alongside the statement about one man's poison being another man's high, one might as well add that one man's saint can be another man's sore and one man's hero can turn out to be that man's biggest hangup.

Ken Kesey
The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

Ken Kesey