Top quotes by William S. Burroughs

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images? Votes: 27

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered. Votes: 27

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. Votes: 26

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has. Votes: 26

I wasn't exposed to art as I was growing up, and can't recall the first time I saw a work of art. However, I remember very clearly a vision I had of a little green reindeer when I was a child, and visions emanate from the same mythical area where painting resides. Whatever the reason, I immediately felt comfortable working with visual materials. Votes: 23

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. Votes: 23

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. Votes: 22

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. Votes: 20

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. Votes: 19

Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. Votes: 19

Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.' Votes: 17

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits. Votes: 16

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military. Votes: 15

Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties. Votes: 15

A functioning police state needs no police. Votes: 14

Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe are the prerecordings themselves. The copies can only repeat themselves word for word. A virus is a copy. You can pretty it up, cut it up, scramble it - it will reassemble in the same form. Votes: 14

No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought. Votes: 13

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade. Votes: 13

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. Votes: 11

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. Votes: 10

You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence. Votes: 10

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. Votes: 10

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. Votes: 9

Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing. Votes: 6

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all. Votes: 6

No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. Votes: 6

Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him. Votes: 5

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning. Votes: 4

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. Votes: 4

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. Votes: 2

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing. Votes: 0

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. Votes: 0

The world wasn't a more tolerant place when I was a young man. Rather, they simply sidestepped all the issues. Votes: 0

I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts. Votes: 0

Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business. Votes: 0

The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus. Votes: 0

If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia. Votes: 0

The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line. Votes: 0

Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don't proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want. Votes: 0

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change Votes: 0

Sexual arousal results from the repetition and impact of image. Votes: 0

Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive. Votes: 0

I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events. Votes: 0

Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in my dirty bare foot... Junkies have no shame... They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido... The junky's shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido... Votes: 0

O death where is thy sting? The man is never on time... Votes: 0

Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme. Votes: 0

What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity. Votes: 0

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective. Votes: 0

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention. Votes: 0

All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another. i could not have done what i have done as a writer had i been a gifted mathematician or physicist. honesty wrung out of him by pain, he cried out with a loud voice. Votes: 0

When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak. Votes: 0

Never interfere in a girl and boy fight. Votes: 0

when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow. Votes: 0

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. Votes: 0

There are no innocent bystanders ... Votes: 0

There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place? Votes: 0

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Votes: 0

Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my good big centipede! If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race. Votes: 0

The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines. Votes: 0

There's a boy across the river with an ass like a peach; alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine. Votes: 0

Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell. Votes: 0

in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen Votes: 0

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. Votes: 0

The line between inner and outer landscapes is breaking down. Earthquakes can result from seismic upheavals within the human mind. The whole random universe of the industrial age is breaking down into cryptic fragments. Votes: 0

Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't. Votes: 0

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. Votes: 0

Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation. Votes: 0

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom. Votes: 0

Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers. Votes: 0

First there was a young guy sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother, then there was an older fatter person sitting in front of television in a T-shirt drinking beer with his mother. Votes: 0

Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, "I am not paid to listen to this drivel - you are a terminal fool!" Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are. Votes: 0

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window. Votes: 0

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed. Votes: 0

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.' Votes: 0

No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water. Votes: 0

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. Votes: 0

Death was in every sell of his body. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. Lee imagined he would glow in the dark. Votes: 0

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. Votes: 0

There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination. Votes: 0

The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. Votes: 0

Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will. Votes: 0

Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your "I" is an illusion. You have to give something called an "I" before you speak of what the "I" believes. Votes: 0

I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing. Votes: 0

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages. Votes: 0

Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity - what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's wrong - a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so-called Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadores, the American Indian wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt. Votes: 0

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way. Votes: 0

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means. Votes: 0

Anslinger's reefer madness did not caution even the seeds of efficient, intelligent, ruthless action ... The same goes for Hoover, sniveling Nixon, the whole miserable, wretchedly evil lot of them ... not a man among them who could have pulled off a successful coup in a banana republic. Votes: 0

All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war. "There's no place for impractical dreamers around here," that's what they always say. "Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around." "As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers." Both favor alcohol and are against pot. Votes: 0

If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido. Votes: 0

I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing. Votes: 0

You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary-it's always imaginary-world in which I would like to live. Votes: 0

I'm an old-fashioned person, and I don't like informers. Votes: 0

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work. Votes: 0

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm? Votes: 0

I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people. Votes: 0

Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk. Votes: 0

The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive... The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtaposition: A collage makes a statement. Votes: 0

Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse. Votes: 0

When you cut into the present the future leaks out. Votes: 0

The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them. Votes: 0

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. Votes: 0

what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish. Votes: 0

If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course. Votes: 0

For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change. Votes: 0

Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. There can be no compromise with this Ugly Spirit. Votes: 0

The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. Votes: 0

There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. Votes: 0

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing. Votes: 0

I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink... Votes: 0

Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat. Votes: 0

Language is a virus from outer space. Votes: 0

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. Votes: 0

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. Votes: 0

Paranoia is just having the right information. Votes: 0

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. Votes: 0

If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future. Votes: 0

We should exterminate all rational thought. Votes: 0

If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. Votes: 0

Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder. Votes: 0

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief. Votes: 0

Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function. Votes: 0

You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere. Votes: 0

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks. Votes: 0

Which came first, the intestine or the tapeworm? Votes: 0

Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience--any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, No Final Satori, no final solution. Just conflict. Votes: 0

An addict never stops growing. Stupider. Votes: 0

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty. Votes: 0

But you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude. Votes: 0

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company. Votes: 0

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine. Votes: 0

The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility. Votes: 0

To my way of thinking the function of the poet is to make us aware of what we know and don't know we know. Votes: 0

We are the cats inside. We are the cats who cannot walk alone, and for us there is only one place. Votes: 0

There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve. Votes: 0

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. Votes: 0

He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells... Votes: 0

Like Spain, I am bound to the past. Votes: 0

For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank. Votes: 0

Danger is a very rare commodity in these times, monopolized by intelligence agencies and stuntmen. Votes: 0

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. Votes: 0

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. Votes: 0

Wouldn't it be great,as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like. Votes: 0

England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs. Votes: 0

Death needs time for what it kills to grow in. Votes: 0

There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it. Votes: 0

Tell Allen I plead guilty to vampirism and other crimes against life. But I love him and nothing else cancels love. Votes: 0

People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face. Votes: 0

My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance. Votes: 0

You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers. Votes: 0

Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. There are things I wish I could forget. Votes: 0

Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Votes: 0

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating. Votes: 0

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. Votes: 0

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers. Votes: 0

If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention. Votes: 0

The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body. Votes: 0

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. Votes: 0

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. Votes: 0

"I wouldn't be in your position" - old saw. If there is any political move that I would advocate it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if they'd have us. Votes: 0

(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can. Votes: 0

[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set. Votes: 0

[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up. Votes: 0

[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on. Votes: 0

[Political movements] both favor alcohol and are against pot. Votes: 0

A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product. Votes: 0

A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased. Votes: 0

A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too. Votes: 0

A junky runs on junk time. When the junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junky time to start. A sick junky has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait. Votes: 0

A paranoid is someone who has all the facts. Votes: 0

A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all. Votes: 0

A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original. Votes: 0

According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext. Votes: 0

Addiction is a disease of exposure. Doctors and nurses, for instance, have a high addiction rate. Votes: 0

All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war. Votes: 0

All political organizations tend to function like a machine, to eliminate the unpredictable factor of affect - emotion. Votes: 0

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? Votes: 0

Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel. Votes: 0

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting. Votes: 0

America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers. Votes: 0

And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not. Votes: 0

Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith. Votes: 0

Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism. Votes: 0

As an old junk pusher told me, 'Watch whose money you pick up.' Votes: 0

As soon as you have a problem, it's insoluble. These things should never have been allowed to happen. Votes: 0

as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape. Votes: 0

Biologically speaking the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancy - always remember that both Negro and White are minority groups - the largest race is the Mongoloid group. Votes: 0

Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness. Votes: 0

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work ... and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Votes: 0

By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge. Votes: 0

Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it. Votes: 0

Consider the impasse of a one God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, To keep his dying show on the road. Votes: 0

Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill! Votes: 0

danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal. Votes: 0

Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer. Votes: 0

dream long enough and dream hard enough you will come to know dreaming can make it so... Votes: 0

Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit --- Kid, it was tasty. Votes: 0

Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction. Votes: 0

Everything Jack says is to be taken with considerable reserve. Votes: 0

Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function. Votes: 0

Exorcism is a subject that interests me, and books on shamanism, I've read through. Votes: 0

Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words. Votes: 0

Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time. Votes: 0

For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling to do so - I might, for example, have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they do well to convert to mammal facilities - it would not lie in my power or desire to reconvert a reluctant dinosaur. Votes: 0

For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you. Votes: 0

For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth. Votes: 0

Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into you - in the soft typewriter of the womb you do not realize the word-armor you carry; for example, when you read this page your eyes move irresistibly from left to right following the words that you have been accustomed to. Votes: 0

Given certain known factors in an equation and the equation comprising a situation of absolute need - any form of need - you can predict the results. Leave a sick junkie in the back room of a drugstore and only one result is possible. Votes: 0

God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire Votes: 0

He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well. Votes: 0

he asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: "when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime... Votes: 0

He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him. Votes: 0

Hemingway said: 'It don't come anymore.' So where did it go? Votes: 0

His whole being radiates a pure, wild sweetness, flitting through night woods with little melodious cries, on some cryptic errand. There is also an aura of doom and sadness about this trusting little creature. He has been abandoned many times over the centuries, left to die in cold city alleys, in hot noon vacant lots, pottery shards, nettles, crumbled mud walls. Many times he has cried for help in vain. Votes: 0

Home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else's ass. Votes: 0

How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far. Votes: 0

How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven. Votes: 0

Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable. Votes: 0

Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to. Votes: 0

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. Votes: 0

I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go. Votes: 0

I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. Votes: 0

I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself. Votes: 0

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... Votes: 0

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. Votes: 0

I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact. Votes: 0

I certainly wouldn't advocate anyone using drugs on a regular or habitual basis. Votes: 0

I detest limitations of any kind, and intend to establish my ass some place where I am a virgin on the police blotter. Votes: 0

I do spend a great deal of time alone. I'm not very gregarious. I don't like parties and miscellaneous gatherings with no particular purpose. I think parties are largely a mistake. The bigger they are the more mistaken they are. Votes: 0

I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. Votes: 0

I don't go into hysterics or anything, but I look around for something to smash it with. I used to live out in the country when I first moved here, and there were a lot of centipedes in the house, and I set out to kill them all. A program of genocide. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd know there's a centipede in this room. And there always was. And I couldn't go to sleep until I killed it. Votes: 0

I don't have any politics. I feel that as soon as politics arises, things are already in a hopeless state of deterioration. Votes: 0

I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love-that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time. Votes: 0

I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South. Votes: 0

I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question Why did you start using narcotics in the first place? should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area. Votes: 0

I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts. Votes: 0

I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pressures now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host. Votes: 0

I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it. Votes: 0

I have no message to give the politicians of the world. They're all completely addicted to promiscuous verbalization and I'm quite sure they would not be at all interested in hearing about cut-ups and hieroglyphics and still less interested to hear about silence. Votes: 0

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac]. Votes: 0

I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely these thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American union. Votes: 0

I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune. Votes: 0

I like the idea of generalizing the narcotic thing by making it black meat addiction. Votes: 0

I like the shaman very much, the way he was crying. Votes: 0

I meant that people will take anything that gives them a lift, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or the consciousness-expanding drugs or opiates. In Iran, until recently, they sold opium in shops legally, and they had 3,000,000 addicts in a population of 15,000,000. I don't believe that all those people were escaping from "complexes" or anything of the sort. They were simply exposed to it. Votes: 0

I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute, & if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it Votes: 0

I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, torn with disembodied lust. Votes: 0

I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . . Votes: 0

I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer. Votes: 0

I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed. Votes: 0

I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself. Votes: 0

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy. Votes: 0

I think if a writer is not endeavoring to expand and alter consciousness in himself and in his readers, he is not doing much of anything. It is precisely words, word lines, lines of words and images, and associations connected with these word and image lines in the brain, that keep you in present time, right where you are sitting now. Votes: 0

I think Judge Learned Hand was a cultured, intelligent man. Votes: 0

I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous. Votes: 0

I took a shot of morphine, liked it, and eventually became addicted. It takes quite a while. It took me three months the first time. This nonsense of people becoming addicted with one shot is medically unsound. Votes: 0

I was thinking about New Mexico, and I rounded the corner in New York, and there was a New Mexico license plate: "New Mexico, land of enchantment." Votes: 0

If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one. Votes: 0

If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever. Votes: 0

If I knew how much you loved me, I would've shot you sooner. Votes: 0

If the soft machine works, don't fix it. If it works, don't fix it. Votes: 0

If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution. Votes: 0

If you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency. Votes: 0

If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data. Votes: 0

If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter. Votes: 0

If you weren't surprised by your life you wouldn't be alive. Life is surprise. Votes: 0

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it. Votes: 0

I'm against Capitol Punishment in all forms, and I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch; these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book. Votes: 0

I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live. Votes: 0

I'm definitely antiscientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselves - they're reality-addicts, they've got to have things so real so they can get their hands on it. Votes: 0

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain. Votes: 0

In exorcism, a verbal argument can never do anything. You can't ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because that's what he wants. It's only through a confront, a non-verbal confront, that anything happens. It has to be non-verbal. Votes: 0

In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling. Votes: 0

In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up. Votes: 0

In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advantage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations. Votes: 0

In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's just ridiculous. It's as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Votes: 0

In this world, [of Flash and Filigree] nothing is true, and censure or outrage is simply irrelevant. Votes: 0

Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination. Votes: 0

Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: yes. Votes: 0

It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from a more complex life form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another-the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter Votes: 0

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae. Votes: 0

It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result. Votes: 0

It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect. Votes: 0

It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy. Votes: 0

I've listened to and know Allen Ginsberg music and met him a couple of times, but I don't have any strong statements to make. Votes: 0

I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us. Votes: 0

Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. Votes: 0

Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness. Votes: 0

Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life. Votes: 0

Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. 'And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another. Votes: 0

Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, fightened flesh. Votes: 0

Knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born. Votes: 0

Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy. Votes: 0

Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand. Votes: 0

Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . . not . . . true, not in accord with the facts of human perception. Votes: 0

Life is a vacation from two eternities, who wants to waste those precious years worrying about what happens when you get back to forever? Votes: 0

Life is a vacation from two eternities. Votes: 0

Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey. Votes: 0

Look at these poisonous color maps where flesh trees grow from human sacrifices; listen to these sniggering half-heard words of tenderness and doom from lips spotted with decay Votes: 0

Madness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels. Votes: 0

Man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived at hand. Votes: 0

Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data. Votes: 0

Modern man has lost the option of silence. Votes: 0

Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide. Votes: 0

Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. I've never been able to understand this sort of fear. Votes: 0

Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is two people because it is a statement of the impasse of dualistic universe which he has created, they have created. I think that any dualistic universe ends in Nova. Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin is a kind of God. A God of stupidity, cowardice, ugliness. Votes: 0

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute. Votes: 0

My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually. Votes: 0

Naked Lunch was from about a thousand pages of material. A lot of it overflowed, then, into the cut-up trilogy including Nova Express. Votes: 0

No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive. Votes: 0

Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about what they're doing in South Korea and places like that. It's like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who've got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes. Now we ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes. Votes: 0

NOTHING happens by coincidence. Votes: 0

Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control the better. Votes: 0

Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them. Votes: 0

One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don't know they know. . . . Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough. . . . So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness. Votes: 0

Open your mind and let the pictures out Votes: 0

Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief…. Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l'originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le vol-pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight. Votes: 0

Piss off Satan and don't take me for dumber than I look. Votes: 0

Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. Votes: 0

Quien sabe? Not me. The older I get the less I sabe, the less wisdom, maturity and caution I have. Votes: 0

Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.' Votes: 0

Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face. Votes: 0

Shooting is my principal pastime. Votes: 0

So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters. Votes: 0

Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer. Votes: 0

Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. Votes: 0

Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony. Votes: 0

Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass. Votes: 0

Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever. Votes: 0

Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks. Votes: 0

That old feeling is still in my leaking heart. Votes: 0

The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not. - pg. 41 Votes: 0

The beautiful disease and The government falls along the weed rooms flesh along the weed government ... Votes: 0

The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. Votes: 0

The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to a certain point. That is, they open psychic areas that would not otherwise be available to the writer. But I feel that once these areas have been opened and the writer has reached them, he is able to get back there in the future without the drug. Votes: 0

The country with a low birth rate and low death rate will be hardest hit - and so the poor may indeed inherit the earth, because they're healthier. Votes: 0

The dark Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time... Votes: 0

The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers Votes: 0

The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image. Votes: 0

The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Votes: 0

The face of evil is always the face of total need. Votes: 0

The Federal Narcotics Bureau does a grave disservice by disseminating a lot of misinformation. Most of what they say is such nonsense that I didn't believe them about addiction. Votes: 0

The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible Votes: 0

The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color. Votes: 0

The idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch. Votes: 0

The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain. Votes: 0

The most deadly picture is a picture of nothing at all. The colors are there, but there is no image, nothing. Votes: 0

The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind. Votes: 0

The Nova Mob doesn't have motives, as we understand motives. "Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my mineral origin," as a leader of the Nova Mob, Mr. Bradley-Mr. Martin, said on one occasion. Votes: 0

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do. Votes: 0

The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window. Votes: 0

The Orgasmic Death Gimmick is rather complicated. It could be called the whole birth-death cycle of action, persuading people that birth and death are realities. Votes: 0

The Planet drifts to random insect doom. Votes: 0

The program of the ruling elite in Orwell's 1984 was: "A foot stamping on a human face forever!" This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program. Votes: 0

The simplest questions are the most difficult. Votes: 0

The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets. Votes: 0

The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power, and more sophisticated techniques used by establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a priori ridiculous, or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest... Votes: 0

The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses. Votes: 0

The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control. Votes: 0

The word is now a virus. Votes: 0

The youth rebellion [1968] is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I do not believe they will calm down ad be ad execs at thirty as the Establishment would like us to believe. Votes: 0

There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves. Votes: 0

There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer... Votes: 0

There isn't a feeling you can get on drugs that you can't get without drugs. Votes: 0

There's a book called Mummy and the people actually seem to have become addicted to mummy dust. And mummy dust was somehow made from people who've died of the most loathsome diseases. It's too bad that [David] Cronenberg didn't see this book, see I only saw it after the film was made. It might have been of interest to him. Votes: 0

There's no place for impractical dreamers around here. Votes: 0

This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games. Votes: 0

Time is what death needs to grow people in. Votes: 0

To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life… Votes: 0

To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth. Votes: 0

Too perfect to be sexually attractive. Votes: 0

Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. "I don't have any whiskey," may be a fact but it is not a truth. Votes: 0

Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. Votes: 0

We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness. Votes: 0

We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color. Votes: 0

We have a great elaborate machine which I feel has to be completely dismantled - in order to do that we need people who understand how the machine works - the mass media - unparalleled opportunity. Votes: 0

We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse Votes: 0

We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself. Votes: 0

Well, "disgusting" doesn't refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don't think that anything is disgusting per se. These words "disgusting" and "filthy," etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters. Votes: 0

What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality. Votes: 0

What originally established the band was cover songs like Not Fade Away. Then, later on, we got more well-known ones like Satisfaction, which you might say echoed the thinking of, well, any generation you care to name, including the present one. But we didn't set out on bits of paper that we were going to be the voice of a generation. The original aim of the Rolling Stones was to play blues. It wasn't even to play rock music. Votes: 0

Whatever happened to God's justice? I am convinced that God exist and God is one asshole. Votes: 0

When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man. Votes: 0

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to. Votes: 0

When you stop growing you start dying. Votes: 0

Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction. Votes: 0

Who was I? The stranger was footsteps in the snow a long time ago. Votes: 0

Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality. Votes: 0

You know a real friend? Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. Votes: 0

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk.. Votes: 0

You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum. Votes: 0

You were given the power to love in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you. Votes: 0