Quotes from Ken Kesey

It's the truth. Even if it didn't happen.

They're out there...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Truth doesn't run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface.

Mr. McMurphy... my friend... I'm not a chicken, I'm a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don't misunderstand me, we're not in here because we are rabbits?we'd be rabbits wherever we were?we're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.

God looks out for fools and niggers.

They don't have to think. Just be afraid naturally and pulling together. Like specks of mercury rolling into the big piece. Like little specks of mercury rolling into bigger specks and then bigger and then just one piece, and nothing to be scared about or hurt about because you're just a piece of a bigger piece getting bigger rolling across the land into an ocean of mercury...

It's fall coming, I thought, I can smell that sour-molasses smell of silage, clanging the air like a bell – smell like somebody's been burning oak leaves, left them to smolder overnight because they're too green.

Ah, ah, ahhh ... first one gets mad, then one goes mad

He knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance... He knows there's a painful side, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

A Man Is Known By The Mice He Keeps

Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow. Truth doesn't run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface.

Alarm, when used for anything less than a fire or an air attack, is certain to muddle the mind, unsettle the senses, and, in most cases, more than double the danger.

Cafe Owners are more frustrated than the common laborer, Draeger writes. The common laborer answers only to the foreman; the cafe owner answers to every patron who stops in

But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

Win or lose, the crows always laughed--the hard, old jaded laughter that came of looking at the world with a black and practiced eye. From the less skillful the laugh might have hinted of despair, or silliness, like the magpies', but the crows were masters of the wry outlook, and Viv never heard them but what she followed their expert lead and laughed along--they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it be made lighter, it could still be made funnier.

Out along the dim six-o'clock street, I saw leafless trees standing, striking the sidewalk there like wooden lightning, concrete split apart where they hit, all in a fenced-in ring. An iron line of pickets stuck out of the ground along the front of a tangleweed yard, and on back was a big frame house with a porch, leaning a rickety shoulder hard into the wind so's not to be sent tumbling away a couple of blocks like an empty cardboard grocery box.

What a cheery atmosphere, don't you agree?

And like: "Why should one want to wake up dead anyway?" If the glorious birth-to-death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have . . . if our grand and 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?

she followed their expert lead and laughed along—they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it be made lighter, it could still be made funnier.

Itt az Å'sz, járt a fejemben, itt az Å'sz. Mintha most elÅ'ször volna itt, fura dolog. ?sz. Még nem is olyan régen tavasz volt, aztán nyár, most meg Å'sz – fura csakugyan.

There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of.

But like always when I try to place my thoughts in the past and hide there, the fear close at hand seeps in through the memory.

The more he tries to stop it, the faster it goes. When he lets his hands and face move like they want to and doesn't try to hold them back, they flow and gesture in a way that's real pretty to watch, but when he worries about them and tries to hold back he becomes a wild, jerky puppet doing a high-strung dance. Everything is moving faster and faster, and his voice is speeding up to match.

When this is all over, I told myself, you will hate yourself for wasting so much time . .