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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 Girlfriend 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

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Because He Knows You

Ken Kesey

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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 Girlfriend 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.

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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

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

Good Writin' Ain't Necessarily Good Readin'.

Plant A Garden In Which Strange Plants Grow And Mysteries Bloom.

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

I've Enjoyed Being A Famous Writer-except That Every Once In A While You Have To Write Something.

You Can't Blame The President For The State Of The Country, It's Always The Poets' Fault. You Can't Expect Politicians To Come Up With A Vision, They Don't Have It In Them. Poets Have To Come Up With The Vision And They Have To Turn It On So It Sparks And Catches Hold.

If You've Got Love In Your Heart, Whatever You Do From That Moment Out Is Likely To Be Right. If You've Got That One True Note Ringing Inside You, Then Whatever You Do Is Going To Be Ok.

Allen Ginsberg Is A Tremendous Warrior As Time Goes By. He's A Warrior First And A Poet Second.

What Makes People So Impatient Is What I Can't Figure; All The Guy Had To Do Was Wait.

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 Any More.

You Don't Lead By Pointing And Telling People Some Place To Go. You Lead By Going To That Place And Making A Case.

It Is Bad To Suppress Laughter. It Goes Back Down To Your Hips. Man, When You Lose Your Laugh You Lose Your Footing.

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.

Lsd Lets You In On Something. When You're Tripping, The Idea Of Race Disappears; The Idea Of Sex Disappears; You Don't Even Know What Species You Are Sometimes. And I Don't Know Of Anybody Who Hasn't Come Back From That Being More Humane, More Thoughtful, More Understanding.

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.

The '60s Aren't Over; They Won't Be Over Until The Fat Lady Gets High.

We Made Love. How Pedestrian The Words Look-trite, Worn, Practically Featureless With Use-but How Can One Better Describe That Which Happens When It Happens? That Creation? That Magic Blending? I Might Say We Became Figures In A Mesmerized Dance Before The Rocking Talisman Of The Moon, Starting Slow, So Slow... A Pair Of Feathers Drifting Through Clear Liquid Substance Of Sky... Gradually Accelerating, Faster And Faster And Finally Into Photon Existence Of Pure Light... As My Whole Straining Body Burst Like Fluid Electricity Into Hers.

The Man Who Seeks Revenge Digs Two Graves.

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The Frontiers We Broke Into In The '60s Are Still Largely Unexplored.

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When You're Around The Whole Dead Scene, They're There As A Tribal Thing; They're There As Part Of A Rendezvous And A Pow-wow.

You Seem To Forget, Miss Flinn, That This Is An Institution For The Insane.

Time Overlaps Itself. A Breath Breathed From A Passing Breeze Is Not The Whole Wind, Neither Is It Just The Last Of What Has Passed And The First Of What Will Come, But Is More--let Me See--more Like A Single Point Plucked On A Single Strand Of A Vast Spider Web Of Winds, Setting The Whole Scene Atingle. That Way; It Overlaps ... As Prehistoric Ferns Grow From Bathtub Planters.

Man, When You Lose Your Laugh You Lose Your Footing.

Listen, Wait, And Be Patient. Every Shaman Knows You Have To Deal With The Fire That's In Your Audience's Eye.

Take What You Can Use And Let The Rest Go By.

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. The Only Way To Prevent It—with Chickens—is To Clip Blinders On Them. So's They Can't See.

There’s No Doubt In My Mind That Mcmurphy’s Won, But I’m Not Sure What.

When Shakespeare Was Writing, He Wasn't Writing For Stuff To Lie On The Page; It Was Supposed To Get Up And Move Around.

Truth Doesn't Run On Time Like A Commuter Train.

It Is Just As Much An Offense To Take Offense As It Is To Give Offense.

There've Been A Lot More People Hurt On Astro-turf Than Grass.

If You're A Conservative, Why Aren't You Behind Conserving The Land?

Alongside The Statement About One Man's Poison Being Another Man's High, One Might As Well Add That One Man's Saint Can Be Another Man's Sore And One Man's Hero Can Turn Out To Be That Man's Biggest Hangup.

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I Been Away A Long Time.

We Think We’re In The Present, But We Aren't. The Present We Know Is Only A Movie Of The Past.

But I Tried, Didn't I? Goddamnit, At Least I Did That.

I've Never Seen Crack Or A Lot Of These New Drugs. Don't Know Anything About Them. I Don't Know What They Do For You, Or Whether They Do Anything Good For You Or Not. But I Do Still Have A Lot Of Faith In The Spiritual Purity Of Lsd And Pot.

I'm So Insane, I Voted For Eisenhower. Oh Yeah, Well I'm So Insane, I Voted For Eisenhower Twice!

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You Can Count How Many Seeds Are In The Apple, But Not How Many Apples Are In The Seed.

More Was Revealed In A Human Face Than A Human Being Can Bear Face To Face.

You’re Just A Young Kid. What Are You Doin’ Here? You Oughta Be Out In A Convertible, Why… Bird-doggin’ Chicks And Bangin’ Beaver. What Are Ya Doin’ Here, For Christ’s Sake? What’s Funny About That? Jesus, I Mean, You Guys Do Nothin’ But Complain About How You Can’t Stand It In This Place Here And Then You Haven’t Got The Guts Just To Walk Out!

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End Of The World

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He's The Sort Of Guy That Gets A Laugh Out Of People.

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.

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The Republican Consciousness Has No Integrity And It Falls Apart Once You Check It Out. If You're A Christian, Why Would You Want To Fry This Dude?

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They Did Type Me As A Horror Writer, But I Have Been Able To Do All Sorts Of Things Within That Framework.

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The Truth Doesn't Have To Do With Cruelty, The Truth Has To Do With Mercy.

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, But 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.

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The Fundamentalists Have Taken The Fun Out Of The Mental.

Things You Think You're Saying For The First Time Ever, Have Been Said Better Before By Shakespeare, Though They May Need Saying Again.

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.

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.

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Your Trouble Is, You Keep Trying To Unscrew The Unscrutable.

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Living Is The Purpose Of Life, And Meaning Can Be Found Therein. I Finds Thou. Thou Becomes It. And It Begins Again.

Purpose Of Life

No, My Friend. We Are Lunatics From The Hospital Up The Highway, Psycho-ceramics, The Cracked Pots Of Mankind. Would You Like Me To Decipher A Rorschach For You?

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 Girlfriend 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.

The Haight Is Just A Place; The '60s Was A Spirit.

The Answer Is Never The Answer. What's Really Interesting Is The Mystery.

People Don't Want Other People To Get High, Because If You Get High, You Might See The Falsity Of The Fabric Of The Society We Live In.

The World News Might Not Be Therapeutic.

The Raw Materials Of Reality Without The Glue Of Time Are Materials Adrift And Reality Is As Meaningless As The Balsa Parts Of A Model Airplane Scattered To The Wind.

When We First Broke Into That Forbidden Box In The Other Dimension, We Knew We Had Discovered Something As Surprising And Powerful As The New World When Columbus Came Stumbling Onto It.

See With Your Ears And Hear With Your Eyes.

There's Something About Taking A Plow And Breaking New Ground. It Gives You Energy.

Breaking Promises

Along The Western Slopes Of The Oregon Coastal Range . . . Come Look: The Hysterical Crashing Of Tributaries As They Merge Into The Wakonda Auga River . . .

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A Sound Of Cornered-animal Fear And Hate And Surrender And Defiance . . . Like The Last Sound The Treed And Shot And Falling Animal Makes As The Dogs Get Him, When He Finally Doesn't Care About Anything But Himself And His Dying.

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Me And Norman Mailer Have Talked About How Hard It Is In America To Get Better. Especially At Writing.

But The Rest Are Even Scared To Open Up And Laugh. You Know, That's The First Thing That Got Me About This Place, That There Wasn't Anybody Laughing. I Haven't Heard A Real Laugh Since I Came Through That Door, Do You Know That? Man, When You Lose Your Laugh You Lose Your Footing.

The Need For Mystery Is Greater Than The Need For An Answer.

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.

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The Best Of All Possible Cages.' Ben Stepped Back To Regard The Job With A Sad Smile. 'what More Can One Ask?

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If Grass Were Legalized, It Would Help Our Drug Problem Enormously.

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Ritual Is Necessary For Us To Know Anything.

The Job Of The Writer Is To Kiss No Ass, No Matter How Big And Holy And White And Tempting And Powerful.

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To Hell With Facts! We Need Stories.

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