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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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For Instance, They [the

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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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.

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

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

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

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 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.

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

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

Funny Sarcastic

Sexual Arousal Results From The Repetition And Impact Of Image.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

Like Pregnant Women Lose Their Teeth Feeding The Stranger, Junkies Lose Their Yellow Fangs Feeding The Monkey.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Which Came First The Intestine Or The Tapeworm?

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'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.

If You Weren't Surprised By Your Life You Wouldn't Be Alive. Life Is Surprise.

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.

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

Once The Law Starts Asking Questions, There's No Stopping Them.

Asking Questions

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.

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.

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.

Smash The Control Images. Smash The Control Machine.

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.

Society Is Cancerous And Bureaucracy Is Its Cancer.

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.

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

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.

America Is Not A Young Land: It Is Old And Dirty And Evil Before The Settlers, Before The Indians. The Evil Is There Waiting.

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

(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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Your Mind Will Answer Most Questions If You Learn To Relax And Wait For The Answer.

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.

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

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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

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

Like Spain, I Am Bound To The Past.

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

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

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.

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

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 Cat Does Not Offer Services. The Cat Offers Itself. Of Course He Wants Care And Shelter. You Don't Buy Love For Nothing.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Knew [timothy] Leary, But Barely Knew, Didn't Really Know Jan [kerouac].

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.

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.

We Should Exterminate All Rational Thought.

Rational Thought

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.

Like All Pure Creatures, Cats Are Practical.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Jesus Christ Said 'by Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them,' Not By Their Disclaimers.

Open Your Mind And Let The Pictures Out

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.

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

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

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.

In The Magical Universe There Are No Coincidences And There Are No Accidents. Nothing Happens Unless Someone Wills It To Happen

Coincidence In Life

Tell The Truth Once And For All And Shut Up Forever.

Telling The Truth

There Is Nothing More Provocative Than Minding Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

Minding My Own Business

Panic Is The Sudden Realization That Everything Around You Is Alive.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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

Wisdom Experience

Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

Shooting Is My Principal Pastime.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Every Word Is Autobiographical, And Every Word Is Fiction.

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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.

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

An Addict Never Stops Growing. Stupider.

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.

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

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

A Paranoid Is Someone Who Has All The Facts.

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

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.

Perhaps All Pleasure Is Only Relief.

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

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

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

I'm An Old-fashioned Person, And I Don't Like Informers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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.

Fear Of Death Is Form Of Stasis Horrors. The Dead Weight Of Time.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Falling In Love

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

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

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

Be Just And If You Can't Be Just, Be Arbitrary.

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

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.

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

Anything That Can Be Done Chemically Can Be Done By Other Means.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Beat Generation

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