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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

-William S. Burroughs

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God Save The Queen

William S. Burroughs

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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

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

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

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

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.

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

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.

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

I Read Mailer's Ancient Evenings With Great Interest Because I Was Interested In . . . The Seven Souls Structure, Which Was Very Helpful To Me In Western Lands. And Also In Place Of Dead Roads. So That's Mailer.

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.

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.

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

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Cheat Your Landlord If You Can -- And Must -- But Do Not Try To Shortchange The Muse.

[jack] Kerouac Was Writing Fiction. What He Did When He Wrote About Me...he Made Me Out With Russian Countesses And Swiss Accounts And Other Things I Didn't Have Or Didn't Happen And So On.

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.

Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.

Man Must Get Away From Verbal Forms To Attain The Consciousness, That Which Is There To Be Perceived At Hand.

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.

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

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.

There's A Book Called Mummy And The People Actually Seem To Have Become Addicted To Mummy Dust. And Mummy Dust Was Somehow Made From People Who've Died Of The Most Loathsome Diseases. It's Too Bad That [david] Cronenberg Didn't See This Book, See I Only Saw It After The Film Was Made. It Might Have Been Of Interest To Him.

When You Get To Be My Age There Are More And More People You Have Known That You Miss. Brion [gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville Are Ones I Think Of Right Away I Was Quite Close To.

Every Word Is Autobiographical, And Every Word Is Fiction.

No One Owns Life, But Anyone Who Can Pick Up A Frying Pan Owns Death.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

His Whole Being Radiates A Pure, Wild Sweetness, Flitting Through Night Woods With Little Melodious Cries, On Some Cryptic Errand. There Is Also An Aura Of Doom And Sadness About This Trusting Little Creature. He Has Been Abandoned Many Times Over The Centuries, Left To Die In Cold City Alleys, In Hot Noon Vacant Lots, Pottery Shards, Nettles, Crumbled Mud Walls. Many Times He Has Cried For Help In Vain.

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

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

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

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 Miss You So Much Your Absence Causes Me, At Times, Accute Pain. I Don't Mean Sexually. I Mean In Connection With My Writing.

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.

Writers, Like Elephants, Have Long, Vicious Memories. There Are Things I Wish I Could Forget.

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.

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.

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

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 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 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.

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 Body Of Knowledge Needs An Organizational Policy. Organizational Policy Can Only Impede The Advancement Of Knowledge. There Is A Basic Incompatibility Between Any Organization And Freedom Of Thought.

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.

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.

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

By The Flaws In The Picture The Truth Will Emerge.

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

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

The Best Way To Keep Something Bad From Happening Is To See It Ahead Of Time... And You Can't See It If You Refuse To Face The Possibility.

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.

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.

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.

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

My Greatest Strength Is To Have A Great Capacity To Confront Myself No Matter How Unpleasant. My Greatest Weakness Is That I Don't. I Know That's Enigmatic, But That's Sort Of A General Formula For Anyone, Actually.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

No Atomic Physicist Has To Worry, People Will Always Want To Kill Other People On A Mass Scale. Sure, He's Got The Fridge Full Of Sausages And Spring Water.

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.

In This World, [of Flash And Filigree] Nothing Is True, And Censure Or Outrage Is Simply Irrelevant.

(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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Funny Sarcastic

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.

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

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

That Old Feeling Is Still In My Leaking Heart.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Asking Questions

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Telling The Truth

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

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

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

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.

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

Strip Your Psyche To The Bare Bones Of Spontaneous Process, And You Give Yourself One Chance In A Thousand To Make The Pass.

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

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

Second Amendment

Madness Is Confusion Of Levels Of Fact. . . . Madness Is Not Seeing Visions But Confusing Levels.

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.

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

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

Man Is An Artifact Designed For Space Travel. He Is Not Designed To Remain In His Present Biologic State Any More Than A Tadpole Is Designed To Remain A Tadpole.

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.

Anslinger's Reefer Madness Did Not Caution Even The Seeds Of Efficient, Intelligent, Ruthless Action ... The Same Goes For Hoover, Sniveling Nixon, The Whole Miserable, Wretchedly Evil Lot Of Them ... Not A Man Among Them Who Could Have Pulled Off A Successful Coup In A Banana Republic.

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.

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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

There Is Nothing More Provocative Than Minding Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

Minding My Own Business

When People Start Talking About Their Bowel Movements, They Are Inexorable As The Processes Of Which They Speak.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Beat Generation

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Should Exterminate All Rational Thought.

Rational Thought

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.

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.

Silence Is Only Frightening To People Who Are Compulsively Verbalizing.

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

I Escaped The [southern-writer] Label Because I Didn't And Don't Write About The South.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

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

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 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.

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

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

Never Interfere In A Girl And Boy Fight.

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

For Years I Wondered Why Dreams Are So Often Dull When Related, And This Morning I Find The Answer, Which Is Very Simple - Like Most Answers, You Have Always Known It: No Context ... Like A Stuffed Animal Set On The Floor Of A Bank.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

To Be An Outlaw You Must First Have A Base In Law To Reject And Get Out Of, I Never Had Such A Base. I Never Had A Place I Could Call Home That Meant Any More Than A Key To A House, Apartment Or Hotel Room. ... Am I Alien? Alien From What Exactly? Perhaps My Home Is My Dream City, More Real Than My Waking Life Precisely Because It Has No Relation To Waking Life.

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

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

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.

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

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

Nothing Happens By Coincidence.

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

Life Is A Vacation From Two Eternities.

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.

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

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

I Am Trying Like Klee, To Create Something That Will Have A Life Of Its Own, That Can Put Me In Real Danger, A Danger Which I Willingly Take On Myself.

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

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

Happinessis A Byproduct Of Function. Those Who Seek Happiness For Itself Seek Victory Without War.

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.

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

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

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.

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

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.

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.

How I Hate Those Who Are Dedicated To Producing Conformity.

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

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

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.

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Oscar Hammerstein II

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