Background Image

...

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.

-William S. Burroughs

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Consider The Impasse Of

William S. Burroughs

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From William S. Burroughs

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.

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

I Like The Shaman Very Much, The Way He Was Crying.

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.

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.

Love? What Is It? Most Natural Painkiller What There Is.

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.

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.

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

If You Build A Good Name, Eventually, That Name Will Be Its Own Currency.

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

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.

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

The More Absolute The Need, The More Predictable The Behavior Becomes Until It Is Mathematically Certain.

Perhaps All Pleasure Is Only Relief.

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

No One Is Ever Really Alone. You Are Part Of Everything Alive.

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

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

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.

I Think Anybody Incapable Of Changing His Mind Is Crazy.

I Am Getting So Far Out One Day I Won't Come Back At All.

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.

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.

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

Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

If Everyone Is To Be Made Responsible For Everything They Do, You Must Extend Responsibility Beyond The Level Of Conscious Intention.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Black Magic Operates Most Effectively In Preconscious, Marginal Areas. Casual Curses Are The Most Effective.

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

Communication Must Become Total And Conscious Before We Can Stop It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Which Came First The Intestine Or The Tapeworm?

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.

Society Is Cancerous And Bureaucracy Is Its Cancer.

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

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

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

The World Wasn't A More Tolerant Place When I Was A Young Man. Rather, They Simply Sidestepped All The Issues.

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.

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Difficult.

Finding Yourself

Love Is A Haunting Melody That I Have Never Mastered, And I Fear I Never Will.

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.

Americans Have A Special Horror Of Giving Up Control, Of Letting Things Happen In Their Own Way Without Interference.

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.

Is Control Controlled By Its Need To Control? Answer: Yes.

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.

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

Our National Drug Is Alcohol. We Tend To Regard The Use Of Any Other Drug With Special Horror.

Funny Sarcastic

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.

Junk Is The Ideal Product... The Ultimate Merchandise. No Sales Talk Necessary. The Client Will Crawl Through A Sewer And Beg To Buy.

He Who Has Learned To Do Nothing With His Whole Mind And Body Will Have Everything Done For Him.

As Soon As You Have A Problem, It's Insoluble. These Things Should Never Have Been Allowed To Happen.

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.

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.

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

All Writing Is In Fact Cut-ups. A Collage Of Words Read Heard Overheard. What Else?

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.

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.

Every Man Has Inside Himself A Parasitic Being Who Is Acting Not At All To His Advantage.

Dennis Cooper, God Help Him, Is A Born Writer.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Shadow Of Death

You Know A Real Friend? Someone You Know Will Look After Your Cat After You Are Gone.

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.

Life Is A Vacation From Two Eternities, Who Wants To Waste Those Precious Years Worrying About What Happens When You Get Back To Forever?

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.

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.

The Cat Does Not Offer Services. The Cat Offers Itself.

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.

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.

I Think Judge Learned Hand Was A Cultured, Intelligent Man.

It's The Little Touches That Make A Future Solid Enough To Destroy.

Addiction Is A Disease Of Exposure. Doctors And Nurses, For Instance, Have A High Addiction Rate.

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.

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.

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.

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

Open Your Mind And Let The Pictures Out

The Only Possible Ethic Is To Do What One Wants To Do.

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.

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.

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.

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

How I Hate Those Who Are Dedicated To Producing Conformity.

Like Spain, I Am Bound To The Past.

The Self Is Like A Pimping Blackmailing Chauffeur Who Gets You From Here To There On Word Lines.

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.

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.

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.

Cut Word Lines — Cut Music Lines — Smash The Control Images — Smash The Control Machine — Burn The Books — Kill The Priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!

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.

Political Revolution

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

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.'

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.

Kick Is Seeing Things From A Special Angle. Kick Is Momentary Freedom From The Claims Of The Aging, Cautious, Nagging, Fightened Flesh.

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

Most All Methods Of Capitol Punishment Are Designed To Inflict The Maximum Of Humiliation - Not Attempts To Prevent Suicide.

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.

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.

A Consumer Society Is About Simplfying And Degrading The Consumer As Well As The Product.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Danger Is A Biologic Necessity, Like Dreams. If You Face Death, For That Time, For The Period Of Direct Confrontation, You Are Immortal.

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.

Your Knowledge Of What Is Going On Can Only Be Superficial And Relative.

After One Look At This Planet Any Visitor From Outer Space Would Say 'i Want To See The Manager.'

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.

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.

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.

We Must All Face The Fact That Our Leaders Are Certifiably Insane Or Worse

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

After A Shooting Spree, They Always Want To Take The Guns Away From The People Who Didn't Do It.

Second Amendment

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.

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.

There Are No Innocent Bystanders.

The Only Way I Like To See Cops Given Flowers Is In A Flower Pot From A High Window.

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.

I Certainly Wouldn't Advocate Anyone Using Drugs On A Regular Or Habitual Basis.

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.

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.

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.

Revolution In America Begins In Books And Music, Then Waits For Political Operatives To 'implement Changes After The Fact.'

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.

I Detest Limitations Of Any Kind, And Intend To Establish My Ass Some Place Where I Am A Virgin On The Police Blotter.

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.

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.

So Many People In The Western World Are Just Automatically Made Ill By Any Sort Of Frank Writing About Sexual Matters.

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.

Intelligence And War Are Games, Perhaps The Only Meaningful Games Left. If Any Player Becomes Too Proficient, The Game Is Threatened With Termination.

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.

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.

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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.

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.

Life Is A Vacation From Two Eternities.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks, For A Country Where Nobody Is Allowed To Mind His Own Business. Thanks, For A Nation Of Finks.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

A Cat's Rage Is Beautiful, Burning With Pure Cat Flame, All Its Hair Standing Up And Crackling Blue Sparks, Eyes Blazing And Sputtering.

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

Shooting Is My Principal Pastime.

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.

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.

He Is A Boy Sleeping Against The Mosque Wall, Ejaculates Wet Dreaming Into A Thousand Cunts Pink And Smooth As Sea Shells.

An Addict Never Stops Growing. Stupider.

As Soon As You Know You Are In Prison, You Have A Possibility To Escape.

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

Exorcism Is A Subject That Interests Me, And Books On Shamanism, I've Read Through.

When I Become Death. Death Is The Seed From Which I Grow.

We Are Setting Out To Create New Worlds, New Beings, New Modes Of Consciousness.

This Is A War Universe. War All The Time. There May Be Other Universes, But Ours Seems To Be Based On War And Games.

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

I Think The Ideal Situation For A Family Is To Be Completely Incestuous.

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.

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.

I Prefer Cats To People, For The Most Part. Most People Aren't Cute At All, And If They Are Cute They Very Rapidly Outgrow It.

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.

In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality.

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

Dream Long Enough And Dream Hard Enough You Will Come To Know Dreaming Can Make It So.

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.

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

I Don't Have Any Politics. I Feel That As Soon As Politics Arises, Things Are Already In A Hopeless State Of Deterioration.

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.

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.

The Beautiful Disease And The Government Falls Along The Weed Rooms Flesh Along The Weed Government.

A Functioning Police State Needs No Police.

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.

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.

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.

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 Make The Right Choices And Protect Your Work. And If You Can Build A Good Name, Eventually, That Name Will Be Its Own Currency.

Trending Author

Kenneth R. Miller

Lion Feuchtwanger

Category