"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 -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. "
— Ken Kesey

"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 girl friend 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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"To hell with facts! We need stories!"
— Ken Kesey

"Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom."
— Ken Kesey

"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting 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 (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side things."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Man, when you lose your laugh, you lose your footing."
— Ken Kesey

"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. "
— Ken Kesey (One Flew over Cuckoos Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"This is just shit. It's happening. No blame. Happening and on the rise it would appear. What can we do to delay it? Probably zilch. To stop it? Likely less. But to survive it? Now that sounds more promising. There is evidence of bad shit having been survived before. Ancient Advice Left in cave by Wise French Caveman: "When Bigbad Shit come, no run scream hide. Try paint picture of it on wall. Drum to it. Sing to it. Dance to it. This give you handle on it." So Twister is my try.
Ken Kesey in a letter to Allen Ginsberg (August 1993)"
— Ken Kesey

"What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing. A man go around lettin' a woman whup him down till he can't laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he's got on his side."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey

"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 -- 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."
— Ken Kesey

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."
— Ken Kesey

"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?"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves."
— Ken Kesey

"Look...Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow. Truth doesn't run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface. So don't sweat it. For focus simply move a few inches back or forward. And once more...look."
— Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)

"This world . . . belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf is the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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?"
— Ken Kesey

"He who walks out of step hears another drum."
— Ken Kesey

"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 (Demon Box)

"He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"- 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 without meaning nothing."
— Ken Kesey

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Ocean, Ocean I'll beat you in the end."
— Ken Kesey

"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.
"
— Ken Kesey

""But I tried though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?""
— Ken Kesey

"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."
— Ken Kesey

"The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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.""
— Ken Kesey

"To hell with facts! We need stories!"
— Ken Kesey

"[The inmates are playing cards and betting with cigarettes.] Martini: [rips a cigarette in half] I bet a nickel. McMurphy: Dime's the limit, Martini. Martini: I bet a dime. [Puts the two halves onto the table.] McMurphy: This is not a dime, Martini. This is a dime. [shows a whole cigarette] If you break it in half, you don't get two nickels, you get shit. Try and smoke it. You understand? Martini: Yes. McMurphy: You don't understand. "
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot. "
— Ken Kesey (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... "
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower.
Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice!
And you tell Mr. Harding right back — he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low — that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November. "
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"We can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed."
— Ken Kesey

"We can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed."
— Ken Kesey

"They're out there...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"...I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did-took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren't built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket--spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside--confused him so he lost his faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won't hold still for us! Damn it anyway!"
— Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)

"'The best of all possible cages.' Ben stepped back to regard the job with a sad smile. 'What more can one ask?'"
— Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)

"It's the truth, even if it didn't happen...

...if they don't exist, how can a man see them?"
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"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."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)