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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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England Has The Most

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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More From William S. Burroughs

Never Interfere In A Girl And Boy Fight.

There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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.

Faced By The Actual Practice Of Freedom, The French And American Revolutions Would Be Forced To Stand By Their Words.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

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 Think Judge Learned Hand Was A Cultured, Intelligent Man.

The Purpose Of My Writing Is To Expose And Arrest Nova Criminals.

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.

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

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

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

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

A Phenomenon Must Be To Some Extent Comprehensible To Be Perceived At All.

Scientology Is A Model Control System, A State In Fact With Its Own Courts, Police, Rewards And Penalties.

The American Uppermiddle-class Citizen Is A Composite Of Negatives. He Is Largely Delineated By What He Is Not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

You Need A Good Bedside Manner With Doctors Or You Will Get Nowhere.

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

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

By The Flaws In The Picture The Truth Will Emerge.

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.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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.

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.

Some Of Us Are Sixty Feet Long With A Brain The Size Of A Walnut.

Virtue Is Simply Happiness, And Happiness Is A By-product Of Function. You Are Happy When You Are Functioning.

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

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.

You Can't Fake Quality Any More Than You Can Fake A Good Meal.

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.

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

Now All Politicians Assume A Necessity Of Control, The More Efficient The Control The Better.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

I Think All Writers Write For An Audience. There Is No Such Thing As Writing For Yourself.

The Dark Gods Of Pain Are Surfacing From The Immemorial Filth Of Time.

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

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.

A Paranoid Is Someone Who Has All The Facts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Were Given The Power To Love In Order To Use It, No Matter What Pain It May Cause You.

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

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.

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.

I'm Creating An Imaginary — It's Always Imaginary — World In Which I Would Like To Live.

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

There Is In Fact Something Obscene And Sinister About Photography, A Desire To Imprison, To Incorporate, A Sexual Intensity Of Pursuit.

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

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.

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.

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

All Political Organizations Tend To Function Like A Machine, To Eliminate The Unpredictable Factor Of Affect - Emotion.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I Had My Way We'd Sleep Every Night All Wrapped Around Each Other Like Hibernating Rattlesnakes.

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.

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.

The Most Deadly Picture Is A Picture Of Nothing At All. The Colors Are There, But There Is No Image, Nothing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing Happens By Coincidence.

Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.

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.

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

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.

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

If The Soft Machine Works, Don't Fix It. If It Works, Don't Fix It.

"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.

Life Is A Vacation From Two Eternities.

For God's Sake, Keep Your Eyes Open. Notice What's Going On Around You.

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.

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

Kerouac Opened A Million Coffee Bars And Sold A Million Pairs Of Levis To Both Sexes. Woodstock Rises From His Pages.

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

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

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."

There Is Nothing More Provocative Than Minding Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

Minding My Own Business

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.

A Paranoid Is Someone Who Knows A Little Of What's Going On.

Piss Off Satan And Don't Take Me For Dumber Than I Look.

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.

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.

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.

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

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

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.

(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.

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.

A Functioning Police State Needs No Police.

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.

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

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.

There Isn't A Feeling You Can Get On Drugs That You Can't Get Without Drugs.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

My Relationship With Cats Has Saved Me From A Deadly And Pervasive Ignorance.

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

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Difficult.

Finding Yourself

I Began To Get A Feeling Familiar To Me From My Bartending Days Of Being The Only Sane Man In A Nuthouse. It Doesn't Make You Feel Superior But Depressed And Scared, Because There Is Nobody You Can Contact.

[political Movements] Both Favor Alcohol And Are Against Pot.

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.

Knowing You Might Not Make It... In That Knowledge Courage Is Born.

If You Talk You Always End Up With Politics, It Gets Nowhere. I Mean Man It's Strictly From The Soft Typewriter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Thinking Is Not Enough. Nothing Is. There Is No Final Enough Of Wisdom, Experience — Any F...ing Thing.

Wisdom Experience

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.

The Word Is Now A Virus.

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

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

In Mexico Your Wishes Have A Dream Power. When You Want To See Someone, He Turns Up.

Many Of My Characters First Came Through To Me As Voices. That's Why I Use A Tape Recorder.

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.

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.

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.

Desperation Is The Raw Material Of Drastic Change. Only Those Who Can Leave Behind Everything They Have Ever Believed In Can Hope To Escape.

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

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

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.

Which Came First The Intestine Or The Tapeworm?

All Political Movements Are Basically Anti-creative - Since A Political Movement Is A Form Of War.

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

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?

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.

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

Quien Sabe? Not Me. The Older I Get The Less I Sabe, The Less Wisdom, Maturity And Caution I Have.

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.

I Think Anybody Incapable Of Changing His Mind Is Crazy.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Tell Allen I Plead Guilty To Vampirism And Other Crimes Against Life. But I Love Him And Nothing Else Cancels Love.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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