Ken Kesey: The Great Artists who Teach us to Love

“What keeps us from being monsters are the great artists who teach us to love.”
—Ken Kesey, Paris Review


The thing that changes as you get older is your belief that certain people are bad forever or good forever. We’re not. It wouldn’t make any sense to write if we were. With blame, you either resist it or you pick up rocks and throw them at who’s to blame. Wendell Berry talks about that when he says we all have the capacity to do evil but we have to learn to forbear it. What keeps us from being monsters are Emerson and Thoreau and the Beatles and Bob Dylan—great artists who teach us to love and hold off on the hurt. The hurt is inside of us, and of course we can always randomly hurt something, but a great artist will teach you to love a thing and not want to possess it or alter it—just to love it.

—Ken Kesey, Paris Review