Ken Kesey citations

Page 3

“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.”

“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…”

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

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

“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.”

“But at least I tried”

“The world news might not be therapeutic.”

“They wouldn't be so cocky if they knew what me and thehave going.”

“The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.”

“Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.”

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

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

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

“The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.”

“There's something about what we're doing, [which] is that we're meant to lose… every time! We make these foires, write these books and perform this music, but the big juggernaut of civilization continues and we've been kind of brushed to the side, but I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead—knowing that society's not going to understand it—and not even caring, because they're having a good time.”

“When people ask me what I think is my best work, it's the bus. There're lots of books, but there's only one bus.”

“I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it…. I'm tired.”

“God… your book is beautiful!”

“Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart… the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"”

“Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range... come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River...”

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

“What worries me, Billy," she said — I could hear the change in her voice — "is how your mother is going to take this.”

“I have known a lot of people to go down and out — they kill themselves with alcohol or downers. But I've never known anybody to go up and out.”

“What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.”

“He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed 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 any more about anything but himself and his dying.”

“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.”

“LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.”

“You can't trust the quality any more…”