Those who had been in on the night started telling about it with a kind of quiet pride and wonder, the way people tell about seeing a big hotel fire or a dam bursting – very solemn and respectful because the casualties aren’t even counted yet – but the longer the telling went on, the less solemn the fellows got.

— Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey Quotes

She don’t lose on her losses, but she wins on ours. To beat her you don’t have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she’s won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.

— Ken Kesey

There’s long spells – three days, years – when you can’t see a thing, know where you are only by the speaker sounding overhead like a bell buoy clanging in the fog. When I can see, the guys are usually moving around as unconcerned as though they didn’t notice so much as a mist in the air. I believe the fog affects their memory some way it doesn’t affect mine.

— Ken Kesey

You’ve – it seems – no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?” “McMurphy, Doc.” “Oh? But I thought – the nurse was saying – ” He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.” “It’s okay, Doc. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I’ve known some people inclined to do that.

— Ken Kesey

Our thermosed lives are, at best nine-tenths of the time padded by vacuum and sealed by silvered silicon, but, for all their artificiality, we are generally able to find means for unstoppering them now and then, and enjoy at least some portion of addlepated freedom.

— Ken Kesey

And sometimes, as you sing, you cannot help feeling that the unheard echoes and tunes forgotten are echoes of other voices and tunes of other singers... in that kind of world.

— Ken Kesey

Am I this? Are these mine? These people? These insane people?

— Ken Kesey

Which one of you claims to be the craziest? Which one is the biggest loony? Who runs these card games.

— Ken Kesey

It was strange to hear that voice, soft and soothing and warm as a pillow, coming out of a face hard as porcelain.

— Ken Kesey

Those who had been in on the night started telling about it with a kind of quiet pride and wonder, the way people tell about seeing a big hotel fire or a dam bursting – very solemn and respectful because the casualties aren’t even counted yet – but the longer the telling went on, the less solemn the fellows got.

— Ken Kesey

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence.

— Ken Kesey

We’d just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just leaning 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.

— Ken Kesey

Boy, if you ain’t a case: waiting someday to be a something to a Somebody you don’t even know, yet.

— Ken Kesey

He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for what a man is? They didn’t understand.

— Ken Kesey

They wouldn’t be so cocky if they knew what me and the moon had going.

— Ken Kesey

I didn’t say it didn’t make sense, Chief – I just said it was talking crazy.

— Ken Kesey

Estar perdido no resulta tan terrible.

— Ken Kesey

I’ve seen a thousand of ‘em, old and young, men and women. Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes – people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst.

— Ken Kesey

Sometimes a manipulator’s own ends are simply the actual disruption of the ward for the sake of disruption. There are such people in our society.

— Ken Kesey

One of the reasons for his drinking, Henry said, was Jon’s momma used to make the whole family get down on their knees and pray like fury every time Jon’s daddy would come home boozed. Jon never quite got it straight that they weren’t thanking the good Lord for his blessing, same as they did at the supper table. So according to Henry, booze come to be something holy to him and with faith like that Jon grew up religious as a deacon.

— Ken Kesey

Era emerso alla vita per forse un minuto cercando di dirci qualcosa, qualcosa che nessuno di noi si curava di ascoltare o cercava di capire, e lo sforzo lo aveva svuotato.

— Ken Kesey
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