Quotes from Ken Kesey

Mostly, I'd just like to look over the country around the gorge again, just to bring some of it clear in my mind again. I been away a long time.

Elveszni talán nem is olyan rossz.

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

To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you.

Ha az emberrel kibasznak, akkor igenis joga van ordítani. És mivelünk kibasztak!

he commences to laugh. Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs; there's nothing funny going on. But it's not the way that Public Relation laughs, it's free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it's lapping against the walls all over the ward. Not like that fat Public Relation laugh. This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it's the first laugh I've heard in years.

A sound of cornered animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed a coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care about anything, but himself and his dying

I've heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards - how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he'll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place; how society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.

The walls are white as the white suits, polished clean as a refrigerator door, and the black face and hands seem to float against it like a ghost.

Then old Pete was on his feet. "I'm tired!" was what he shouted, a strong, angry copper tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before. Everyone hushed. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish hollering to shame.

We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind.

They've still got their problems, just like all of us. They're still sick men in lots of ways. But at least there's that: they are sick men now. No more rabbits, Mack. Maybe they can be well men someday. I can't say.

Whoever comes in the door is usually disappointing, but there is always a chance otherwise. And when a key hits the lock, all the heads come up like there's strings on them.

And crying doesn't always mean need

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

My friend, that, as anyone can see, is not a hotel; it's a depot.

Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another. It was too naked and painful. More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear, face-to-face.

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. He knows there's a painful side;

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.

Azzal együtt megpróbáltam – mondja. – Annyi azért kitellett tÅ'lem, a büdös istenit, hogy megpróbáltam, nem igaz?

Ez nem én vagyok. Ez nem lehet énnekem az arcom. Az se én voltam, aki ezt az arcot elÅ'ször fölpróbáltam. Se akkor, se most – csak amit az emberek kinéznek belÅ'lem, úgy nézek ki. Mintha kinézetre sose lettem volna én.

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

He wants something from me. He doesn't know that the only thing I have left is the hollow of something gone

Ratched shall line us all against the wall, where we'll face the terrible maw of a muzzle-loading shotgun which she has loaded with Miltowns! Thorazines! Libriums! Stelazines! And with a wave of her sword, blooie! Tranquilize all of us completely out of existence.