Ken Kesey quotes:

When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.

The Grateful Dead are our religion. This is a religion that doesn't pay homage to the God that all the other religions pay homage to.

It's time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We've reached a certain point, but we're not moving any more.

The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths.

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?

Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

There's something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.

Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

Marvelous wonders don't have to happen of a sudden, the way they do in the Arabian Nights. They can also take a long time, like crystals growing, or minds changing, or leaves turning. The trick is to keep an eye peeled, so they don't slip by unappreciated.

There's a lot of people who don't understand the circle crops in England. Pure enigma.

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 don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

When you're around the whole Dead scene, they're there as a tribal thing; they're there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

The '60s aren't over; they won't be over until the Fat Lady gets high.

She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted--it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.

To be just without being mad (and the madder you get the madder you get), to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical... smoke grass.

The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

He's got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he's got pretty hands.

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.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

If this glorious birth to death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have ..if our grand exhilarating fight of life is such a tragically short little scrap anyway,compared to the eons of rounds before and after-then why should one want to relinquish even a few precious seconds of it?

See with your ears and hear with your eyes.

But the more I read... after awhile... I begin to find they were all writing about the same thing, this same dull old here-today-gone-tomorrow scene... Shakespeare, Milton, Matthew Arnold, even Baudelaire, even this cat whoever he was that wrote Beowulf... the same scene for the same reasons and to the same end, whether it was Dante with his pit or Baudelaire with his pot... the same dull old scene...

I see he had his shorts on under the towel all along.I think for a fact that she'd rather he'd of been stark naked under that towel than had on those shorts. She's glaring at those big white whales leaping round on his shorts in pure wordless outrage."

I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

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

Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

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.

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.

Anti-drug fanatics and cops are the criminals - it's like McCarthyism. They need someone to dislike to distract the public from the really important problems.

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.

The Republican consciousness has no integrity and it falls apart once you check it out. If you're a Christian, why would you want to fry this dude?

He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered.

It is just as much an offense to take offense as it is to give offense.

You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think. Yes...I see...

High high in the hills , high in a pine tree bed. She's tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant, Three geese in a flock one flew east one flew west one flew over the cuckoo's nest

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...

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.

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

To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ...

You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.

I'd think, maybe he truly is something extraordinary. He's what he is, that's it. Maybe that makes him strong enough, being what he is.

In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain't many!

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.

turns me on so loud it's like no sound, everybody yelling at me hands over their ears from behind a glass wall, faces working around in talk circles but no sound from the mouths. my sound soaks up all other sound.

Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.

He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.

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.

Good writing ain't necessarily good reading.

They can't tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.

It's the truth, even if it didn't happen......if they don't exist, how can a man see them~?

Tricker the Squirrel is the best piece I ever wrote. It's intricate.

Luckily, I remembered something Malcolm Cowley had taught us at Stanford - perhaps the most important lesson a writing class (not a writer, understand, but a class) can ever learn. 'Be gentle with one another's efforts,' he often admonished us. 'Be kind and considerate with your criticism. Always remember that it's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.'

The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

When you love someone it is forever, or it was never really love at all.

He was in his chair in the corner, resting a second before he came out for the next round -- in a long line of next rounds. The thing he was fighting, you couldn't whip it for good. All you could do was keep on whipping it, till you couldn't come out anymore and somebody else had to take your place.

Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.

I've been to too many Dead concerts. There've been smokin' holes where my memory used to be.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.

he's finished with that; it's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing wit

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

Alongside the statement about one man's poison being another man's high, one might as well add that one man's saint can be another man's sore and one man's hero can turn out to be that man's biggest hangup.

Always stay in your own movie.

Anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?

But he wonâ??t let the pain blot out the humor no moreâ??n heâ??ll let the humor blot out the pain.

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

But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.

But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong. . .

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

But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

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.

But, gee," the other nurse says, "what on earth would MAKE a man want to do something like disrupt the ward for, Miss Ratched? What possible motive...?""You seem to forget, MISS Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.

Don't say it...I've seen too many loves sundered by too much needless honesty.

For there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced, a last inviolable stronghold that can never be taken, whatever the attack; your vote can be taken, you name, you innards, or even your life, but that last stonghold can only be surrendered. And to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love.

Good writin' ain't necessarily good readin'.

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't lift, something everybody knows he can't lift. But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.

I believe that a man should be... as big as he feels it in him to be!

I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil ? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it ? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.

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.

I felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family. And I think a family is a lot more important than writing.

I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.

I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered 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.

I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

I used to think we were going to win in the '60s. Nixon went out and I thought we won.

I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.

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.

If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.

If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK.

I'm so insane, I voted for Eisenhower. Oh yeah, well I'm so insane, I voted for Eisenhower TWICE!

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down to your hips. Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

I've found psychedelics to be keys to worlds that have always existed, that have to be talked about.

I've never seen crack or a lot of these new drugs. Don't know anything about them. I don't know what they do for you, or whether they do anything good for you or not. But I do still have a lot of faith in the spiritual purity of LSD and pot.

Living is the purpose of life, And meaning can be found therein. I finds thou. Thou becomes it. And it begins again.

Major part of the Southern California pop scene in the 60s "People think that love is an emotion. Love is good sense."

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.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.

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

Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?

No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.