{"author":"Ken Kesey","author_id":"Ken+Kesey","total_quotes":57,"quotes":[{"text":"You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think. Yes...I see...","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["crazy","ken-kesey","one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-s-nest"],"id":4223,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"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.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["crazy","laughter","mental-health","mental-illness"],"id":9173,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"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.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["pessimism","realism-truth","reflection"],"id":10089,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"I don't think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I'm not able to give you those. Not for the others, anyway. For myself? Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was-- shall we be kind and say different? It's a better, more general world than the other one. I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful. And I got sick. It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["reality","society"],"id":36176,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"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.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["observation","psychology","reality-of-life"],"id":46737,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy, you should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razorblade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness till what little dignity you got left is gone and you shrink up to nothing from humiliation, I can’t do anything about that, either.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["dignity"],"id":53243,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"The most work he did on [the urinals] was to run a brush once or twice apiece, singing some song as loud as he could in time to the swishing brush; then he'd splash in some Clorox and he'd be through. ... And when the Big Nurse...Came in to check McMurphy's cleaning assignment personally, she brought a little compact mirror and she held it under the rim of the bowls. 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.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["humor","madness"],"id":87493,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh across the water. Laughing at the girl,at the guys, at George,at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. 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 know's 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.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["humor","hurt","laughing","laughter","pain"],"id":114925,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"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. . .","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["weakness"],"id":133087,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"},{"text":"He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.","author":"Ken Kesey","tags":["double-entendre","psychology"],"id":136182,"author_id":"Ken+Kesey"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":57,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}