Quotes from Ken Kesey

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

High high in the hills , high in a pine tree bed. She's tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant, Three geese in a flock one flew east one flew west one flew over the cuckoo's nest

Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.

We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, 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.

Good writin' ain't necessarily good readin'.

No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?

He knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side of things.

But he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.

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.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.

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.

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

It's time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We've reached a certain point, but we're not moving any more.

To hell with facts! We need stories!

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.

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures being real guys.