Ken Kesey — Quotes from Author's Books

She would get after him about the toilets, using that same terrible, slow, patient pressure she used on everybody, as he stood there in front of her, looking like a little kid getting a bawling out, hanging his head, and the toe of one boot on top of the other, saying, "I try and try, ma'am, but I'm afraid I'll never make my mark as head man of the crappers."

Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That's what McMurphy can't understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we'd be easy to get at.

Nobody's gonna convince me I can't do something till I try it.

Pete had looked out first and seen all the delivery-room machinery waiting for him and somehow realized what he was being born into, and had grabbed on to everything handy in there to try to stave off being born.

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.

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

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

"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.

Which one of you claims to be the craziest? Which one is the biggest loony? It's my first day, and what I like to do is make a good impression straight off on the right man.

I'd think he was strong enough being his own self that he would never back down the way she was hoping he would. 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.

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.

"What would you speculate it was about her that frightened you so, Billy?"
"I was in luh-love with her."

"You can't run around here in a towel!"
"No?" He looks down at the part of the towel she's eye to eye with, and it's wet and skin tight. "Towels against ward policy too? Well, I guess there's nothin' to do exce—"
"Stop! Don't you dare. You get back in that dorm and get your clothes on this instant!"

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

Shakes hands with everybody he comes to except Big George the water freak, who grins and shies back from that unsanitary hand, so McMurphy just salutes him and says to his own right hand as he walks away, "Hand, how do you suppose that old fellow knew all the evil you been into?"