I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madroño trees on the horizon. 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. I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the surrounding stars to shame. Furthermore, I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head.

— Ken Kesey

... 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

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

It’s fall coming, I thought, I can smell that sour-molasses smell of silage, clanging the air like a bell – smell like somebody’s been burning oak leaves, left them to smolder overnight because they’re too green.

— Ken Kesey

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

— Ken Kesey

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 anymore.

— Ken Kesey

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

— Ken Kesey

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.

— Ken Kesey

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

— Ken Kesey

Nobody's going to convince me I can't do something till I try it." -- McMurphy

— Ken Kesey