Ken Kesey Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

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

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.

Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more — let me see — more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps...As prehistoric ferns grow from bathtub planters. As a shiny new ax, taking a swing at somebody's next year's split-level pinewood pad, bites all the way to the Civil War. As proposed highways break down through the stacked strata of centuries.

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.

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. . .