Novelist Kenneth Elton Kesey, fondly remembered as 'Ken' was an important link between 1950's Beat Generation and 1960's Hippie Culture. The world remembers him as a counter-cultural icon, novelist and essayist that ushered the American society into an era of psychedelic drugs. He compiled his personal experiences in his first novel 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. It was followed by more incredible works like 'Genesis West', 'Sometimes a Great Nation' and 'Demon Box' that captured his beautiful transformation from a revolutionary novelist to the founder of hippie generation. His book 'Cuckoo' was an account of abuses inflicted by the system on individuals. It was later enacted as a movie directed by Milos Forman. Though Kesey was not pleased with the idea, apparently the audience liked it. The movie became a hit in America, subsequently winning five Academy Awards. Kesey bonded with like-minded individuals to form "Merry Prankster", a group that helped promote liberal ideas. The group set out on a wild adventure, conducting Acid tests and treating unsuspecting viewers with The Warlock band's performances. He was put in jail for illegal possession of drugs. Following this, he spent a quite family life as an author and teacher until his death. We have collected his most famous quotes and thoughts from his most famous 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' and other writings. Presenting a collection of some great Ken Kesey quotes about love, life, failure, success, humor, truth, and much more.
If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.
That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.
What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.
Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.
Ken Kesey
Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES!
Ken Kesey
He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum
Ken Kesey
No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?
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
But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.
Ken Kesey
I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.
Of offering more than what I can deliver,
I have a bad habit, it is true.
But I have to offer more than I can deliver,
To be able to deliver what I do.
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...
Then the trembling starts to get worse. This must be how they begin, he thinks. Freak-outs. Breakdowns. Crack-ups. Eventually shut-ins and finally cross-offs. But first the cover-up . . .
Ken Kesey
It's the truth, even if it didn't happen...
...if they don't exist, how can a man see them?
He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he'd let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit.
Because sometimes the only way to keep from losing everything is to give everything up. Because sometimes strength must for the sake of winning give in to--
Ken Kesey
Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. It is the deepest faith we have, and the unbeliever- the blasphemer, the dissenter- will stimulate in us the most righteous of furies.
He couldn't seem to get his teeth into anything. Except books. The things in books was darn near more real to him than the things breathing and eating.
Ken Kesey
The best of all possible cages.' Ben stepped back to regard the job with a sad smile. 'What more can one ask?
Ken Kesey
I don't seem able to get it straight in my mind....
. . .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.
But I remember 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.
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.
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'd give something to see that. Mostly, I'd just 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.
