Ken Kesey Quotes

American novelist (1935–2001)

Kenneth Elton Kesey (17 September 1935 – 10 November 2001) was an American writer, most famous for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and as a cultural icon whom some consider a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s as a founding member of the Merry Pranksters.

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Alternative Names: Kenneth Kesey • Kenneth Elton Kesey • Ken Elton Kesey • Ken E. Kesey • O. U. Levon

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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.

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

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.

Ocean, Ocean I'll beat you in the end.

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.

Does the Spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?

I'd think, maybe he truly is something extraordinary. He's what he is, that's it. Maybe that makes him strong enough, being what he is.

. . .sometimes reading the same page over and over, until one sleepy afternoon something clicked, like a lock unlocking, and she saw those printed doors swing open on a vast house of words.

A bluetick hound bays out there in the fog, running scared and lost because he can’t see. No tracks on the ground but the one’s he’s making, and he sniffs in every direction with his cold red-rubber nose and picks up no scent but his own fear, fear burning down into him like steam.

"McMurphy tied a chunk of meat to each end of a four-foot string, tossed it into the air, and sent two squawking birds wheeling off, "Till death do them part.

I been away a long time.

You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself

You can make a mark across the night with the tip of an embered stick, and you can actually see it fixed in its finity. You can be absolutely sure of its treacherous impermanence. And that is all.

The Grateful Dead are faster than light drive.

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.