Ken Kesey — Quotes from Author's Books

She walked along shaking her head and saying, "Why, this is an outrage… an outrage…" at every bowl. McMurphy sidled right along beside her, winking down his nose and saying in answer, "No; that’s a toilet bowl... a toilet bowl."

That's a good rule for a smart gambler: look the game over awhile before you draw yourself a hand.

"Hell, are you birds telling me I can’t lift that dinky little gizmo?"
"My friend, I don't recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets."

When a man showed up you didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at yours, because it's painful to see somebody so clear that it's like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely. 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.

As soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open.

And I’ve never seen a woman I thought was more man than me.

The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin' at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it's their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin' party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight.

And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.

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

A face handsome and brutal and waxy like a mask, wanting nothing. I’ve seen a million faces like it.

When she posted work assignments on the bulletin board, and he read that she'd given him latrine duty, he went to her office and knocked on that window of hers and personally thanked her for the honor, and told her he’d think of her every time he swabbed out a urinal.

"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 <...> that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November."
"I take off my hat," Harding says, bows his head, and shakes hands with McMurphy.

Questions ain’t bonebreakers, they ain’t sticks and stones.

So for forty years he was able to live, if not right in the world of men, at least on the edge of it.

He'll still get up from time to time and wag his head and let us know how tired he is, but it's not a complaint or excuse or warning any more — 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.