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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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And There Are My

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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[arab Peoples] Are Stuck Back Thousands Of Years And They Think They're Going To Get Out With A Tv Set.

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The Face Of Evil Is Always The Face Of Total Need.

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.

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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.

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Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.

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Human, Allen, Is An Adjective, And Its Use As A Noun Is In Itself Regrettable.

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Wisdom Experience

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Coincidence In Life

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Political Revolution

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That Old Feeling Is Still In My Leaking Heart.

How Long Does It Take Man To Realize That He Cannot Want What He Wants? You Have To Live In Hell To See Heaven.

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.

Junk Takes Everything And Gives Nothing But Insurance Against Junk Sickness.

As An Old Junk Pusher Told Me, 'watch Whose Money You Pick Up.'

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.

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.

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There's A Boy Across The River With An Ass Like A Peach; Alas I Was No Swimmer And Lost My Clementine.

Danger Is A Very Rare Commodity In These Times, Monopolized By Intelligence Agencies And Stuntmen.

There Is No Line Between The 'real World' And 'world Of Myth And Symbol.' Objects, Sensations, Hit With The Impact Of Hallucination.

Cat Hate Reflects An Ugly, Stupid, Loutish, Bigoted Spirit. There Can Be No Compromise With This Ugly Spirit.

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

I Read A Lot Of Books For Information, Like Doctor Books, Spy Books. . . .

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

There Are No Innocent Bystanders ... What Are They Doing There In The First Place?

The Purpose Of Technology Is Not To Confuse The Brain But To Serve The Body.

In The U.s., You Have To Be A Deviant Or Die Of Boredom.

"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.

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."

If You Consider Any Set Of Data Without A Preconceived Viewpoint, Then A Viewpoint Will Emerge From The Data.

I Project Myself Out Through The Glasses And Across The Street, A Ghost In The Morning Sunlight, Torn With Disembodied Lust.

Yes, For All Of Us In The Shakespeare Squadron, Writing Is Just That: Not An Escape From Reality, But An Attempt To Change Reality.

Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.

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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

Hustlers Of The World, There Is One Mark You Cannot Beat: The Mark Inside.

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.

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.

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.

If, After Spending Time With A Person, You Feel As Though You've Lost A Quart Of Plasma, Avoid That Person In The Future.

Humility Is Indeed Beatness, A Compulsory Virtue That No One Exhibits Unless He Has To.

How Far Would People Get In Physics If Discovery Was Described As Disgusting - "your Formula Is Disgusting And Filthy"? Not Very Far.

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.

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.

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.

Some People Like Neat Suburbs. I Always Am Attracted To The Rundown And The Old And The Offbeat.

O Death Where Is Thy Sting? The Man Is Never On Time.

Beat Generation

Like Many Nonconformist And Beat Generation Writers, William S. Burroughs Takes The Outcasts Of Society As His Theme.

Whether You Sniff It Smoke It Eat It Or Shove It Up Your Ass The Result Is The Same: Addiction.

When All Lies, Deceit, Pretense Is Stripped Away, What Remains? The Truth Of A Painting, Or A Book Or A Man.

Hemingway Said: 'it Don't Come Anymore.' So Where Did It Go?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Time: A Landing Field! Death Needs Time Like A Junkie Needs Junk.

You Must Learn To Exist With No Religion, No Country, No Allies. You Must Learn To Live Alone In Silence.

Who Was I? The Stranger Was Footsteps In The Snow A Long Time Ago.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Phillip E. Johnson

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