Quotes from Ken Kesey

swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing-half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could

Harding) I indulged in certian practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me - and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.

and as this need grows more intense so does a sensation of movement, speed to come, impending declaration—"The past is funny, Viv; it never seems to let things lie, finished. It never seems to stay in place as it should"—until she feels that she is beginning to run down an ever steepening hill and she must stop before the hill gets too steep and she gets going too fast to stop:

In the fall when they burn the stubble off the fields the sun gets this dusty hazy color, and the mare's-tail clouds whipping along near Wakonda Head look like goldenrod bent over by the wind. It's always real pretty. You can almost hear it ring in the sky.

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? Food for thought there.

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

Sometimes a manipulator's own ends are simply the actual disruption of the ward for the sake of disruption. There are such people in our society.

And consummated there a month of quick looks, guarded smiles, accidental brushings of body too open or too secret to be mere accident, and all the other little unfinished vignettes of desire . . . and, perhaps most of all, consummated the shared knowledge of that desire

Sometimes—after futile all-nights—deserts fill my work-house and smoking sand gets in my eyes . . . and I must split the swollen cabin to check the dawn, to find: the creek still parties with the moon . . . the thrusting pine and whippoorwills still celebrate the sun. It generally works, and things are cool, but sometimes—after cutting out—nothing out there happens but the night. And those days were best forgotten.

Our thermosed lives are, at best nine-tenths of the time padded by vacuum and sealed by silvered silicon, but, for all their artificiality, we are generally able to find means for unstoppering them now and then, and enjoy at least some portion of addlepated freedom.

She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel—tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which.

And sometimes, as you sing, you cannot help feeling that the unheard echoes and tunes forgotten are echoes of other voices and tunes of other singers...in that kind of world.

Hell of a life. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Puts a man in one confounded bind, I'd say.

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

In the deepening sky where the spearpoint firs scratch the clouds, already a moon—like a cast-off paring from the setting sun. This is Hank's bell, too.

There's a Monopoly game going on in the day room. They've been at it for three days

He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for what a man is? They didn't understand.

They wouldn't be so cocky if they knew what me and the moon had going.

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

Tata zicea ca, daca nu iei seama, oamenii te silesc, intr-un fel sau altul, sa faci ce socotesc ei ca trebuie sa faci, ori sa te indaratnicesti ca un catar si sa faci toate pe dos, in ciuda lor.

Little of God, then a little of ghosts, is that it, bub?" as though our unfortunate argument were forgotten. "Well . . . keep a tight hold on it.

You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to the world from running you plumb crazy

I didn't say it didn't make sense, Chief – I just said it was talking crazy.

Am I this? Are these mine? These people? These insane people?