Quotes from Ken Kesey

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

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.

We can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.

Of offering more than what I can deliver, I have a bad habit, it is true. But I have to offer more than I can deliver, To be able to deliver what I do.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

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

The world news might not be therapeutic.

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

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...

But I tried though, he says. Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

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.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.

I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. 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.

To hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.

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. . .

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

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.

I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I ever have been me.

Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another.

Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.

If this glorious birth to death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have ..if our grand exhilarating fight of life is such a tragically short little scrap anyway,compared to the eons of rounds before and after-then why should one want to relinquish even a few precious seconds of it?