But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

— Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey Quotes

What they got on the program for us now, Chief?” he asked. “The boot? The rack? I hope nothing too strenuous, because, man, am I stove up bad!

— Ken Kesey

He wants something from me. He doesn’t know that the only thing I have left is the hollow of something gone.

— Ken Kesey

Rany, nawet chinscy komunisci niejednego by sie mogli od siostry nauczyc!

— Ken Kesey

One of you guys, for cryin’ out loud! This is where you get the edge, don’t you see that? We have to do this – or we’re whipped! Don’t a one of you clucks know what I’m talking about enough to give us a hand? You, Gabriel? George? No? You, Chief, what about you?

— Ken Kesey

I turned, going back along the planks toward the idling pick-up without saying anything else. I just wanted to be away from people. I didn’t want to have to avoid answering questions about what happened. I didn’t want the questions.

— Ken Kesey

Is it that?” she asked in a soft voice, once more examining her hands, “not being sure of that ‘someday’? Or is it not being sure of having that ‘somebody’?

— Ken Kesey

And I lay awake for hours, hoping another phone call would give me that opportunity to be alone and unruffled with her.

— Ken Kesey

The big, hard body had a tough grip on life. It fought a long time against having it taken away, flailing and thrashing around so much I finally had to lie full length on top of it and scissor the kicking legs with mine while I mashed the pillow into the face. I lay there on top of the body for what seemed days.

— Ken Kesey

He didn’t feel he had the ability to follow her into those reveries or the right to call her back out.

— Ken Kesey

A wind came up and broke the sea into green and silver chunks, like a field of glass and chrome, and the boat began to rock and pitch about more... The waves got bigger as we got closer to shore, and from the crests clots of white foam blew swirling up in the wind to join the gulls.

— Ken Kesey

With eyes like he’s been to the edge and looked over .

— Ken Kesey

No. No, listen. They don’t bust you that way; they work on you ways you can’t fight! They put things in! They install things. They start as quick as they see you’re gonna be big and go to working and installing their filthy machinery when you’re little, and keep on and on and on till you’re fixed!

— Ken Kesey

Meaning: Good night but stay. Viv, silent and slim as a shaft of sleepy light, stay, talk more to me with your articulate eyes. Hank, forget my words behind my words, stay, say some more. This is our chance. This is my chance. Say enough more for love or hate, enough more to make me sure of one or the other. Please stay, please stay .

— Ken Kesey

We are victims of a matriarchy here, my friend, and the doctor is just as helpless against it as we are.

— Ken Kesey

He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.

— Ken Kesey

They didn’t mind so much when I was a dumb logger and got into a hassle; that’s excusable, they say, that’s a hard-workin’ feller blowing off steam, they say. But if you’re a gambler, if they know you to get up a back-room game now and then, all you have to do is spit slantwise and you’re a goddamned criminal.

— Ken Kesey

Hank brooded behind a newspaper with heavy, rumbling silence, and Lee, smoking and staring out of the kitchen window with tragic, defeated eyes and an anemic pallor to his cheeks, didn’t look capable of sustaining the shock of a haircut, let alone the loss of a mouthful of teeth.

— Ken Kesey

And the forest at night might be beautiful, but if it was dark how was a man to know that?

— Ken Kesey

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
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