“Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.”

—  Ken Kesey

"The Art of Fiction" - interview by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994) <!-- p. 92 -->
Context: I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers. … 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, but 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. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom." by Ken Kesey?
Ken Kesey photo
Ken Kesey 103
novelist 1935–2001

Related quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

382
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)

“Perennial: Any plant which, had it lived, would have bloomed year after year.”

Henry N. Beard (1945) American writer, co-founder and editor of National Lampoon

Gardening: A Gardener's Dictionary http://books.google.com/books?id=lXEICs1TcWMC&q=%22Perennial+Any+plant+which+had+it+lived+would+have+bloomed+year+after+year%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage (1982)

“Praying is another way of singing.
You plant in the tree the soul of lemons.
You plant in the gardens the spirit of roses.”

Dannie Abse (1923–2014) Welsh poet and physician

Poem Song for Dov Shamir in: Dannie Abse (1963), Dannie Abse, p. 8

Mark Pesce photo

“I very much consider the Internet a garden, and I'm a gardener, and I plant things in it and I work within the framework of the soil, the seasons, the climate, and the temperature, to produce plants.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

An Afternoon with Mark Pesce: The Uncut Version http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/interview.html

“The world's great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.”

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) British poet, novelist and translator

One Foot in Eden (1972)

John F. Kennedy photo

“…we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address in Berkeley at the University of California (109)" (23 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963

Cosimo de' Medici photo

“There is in gardens a plant which one ought to leave dry, although most people water it. It is the weed called envy.”

Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) First ruler of the Medici political dynasty

Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici in: Jean Lucas-Dubreton (1961). Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici. p. 58

P. D. Ouspensky photo

“This is the Hall of Wisdom. No one can reveal it, no one can hide it. Like a flower it must grow and bloom in thy soul. If thou wouldst plant the seed of this flower in thy soul — learn to discern the real from the false. Listen only to the Voice that is soundless… Look only on that which is invisible, and remember that in thee thyself, is the Temple and the gate to it, and the mystery, and the initiation.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

Card II : The High Priestess
The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)
Context: Then the woman turned her face to me and looked into my eyes without speaking. And through me passed a thrill, mysterious and penetrating like a golden wave; tones vibrated in my brain, a flame was in my heart, and I understood that she spoke to me, saying without words:
"This is the Hall of Wisdom. No one can reveal it, no one can hide it. Like a flower it must grow and bloom in thy soul. If thou wouldst plant the seed of this flower in thy soul — learn to discern the real from the false. Listen only to the Voice that is soundless... Look only on that which is invisible, and remember that in thee thyself, is the Temple and the gate to it, and the mystery, and the initiation."

Related topics