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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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I See Painting As

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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If I Knew How Much You Loved Me, I Would’ve Shot You Sooner.

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

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.

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.

As A Young Child I Wanted To Be A Writer Because Writers Were Rich And Famous. They Lounged Around Singapore And Rangoon Smoking Opium In A Yellow Pongee Silk Suit. They Sniffed Cocaine In Mayfair And They Penetrated Forbidden Swamps With A Faithful Native Boy And Lived In The Native Quarter Of Tangier Smoking Hashish And Languidly Caressing A Pet Gazelle.

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

Funny Sarcastic

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.

There Are No Innocent Bystanders.

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.

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

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

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.

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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

Like All Pure Creatures, Cats Are Practical.

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.

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.

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

An Addict Never Stops Growing. Stupider.

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

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

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

It Is To Be Remembered That All Art Is Magical In Origin - Music, Sculpture, Writing, Painting - And By Magical I Mean Intended To Produce Very Definite Results. Paintings Were Originally Formulae To Make What Is Painted Happen. Art Is Not An End In Itself, Any More Than Einstein's Matter-into-energy Formulae Is An End In Itself. Like All Formulae, Art Was Originally Functional, Intended To Make Things Happen, The Way An Atom Bomb Happens From Einstein's Formulae.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Whole Drug War Is Nothing But A Pretext To Increase Police Power And Personnel, And That, Of Course, Is Dead Wrong. So Many Created Imagined Drug Offenses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

If The Mortality Rate Seems High We Must Realize That Nature Is A Ruthless Teacher. There Are No Second Chances In Mother Nature's Survival Course.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

Silence Is Only Frightening To People Who Are Compulsively Verbalizing.

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.

[death Is] A Gimmick. It's The Time-birth-death Gimmick. Can't Go On Much Longer, Too Many People Are Wising Up.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There Couldn't Be A Society Of People Who Didn't Dream. They'd Be Dead In Two Weeks.

That Old Feeling Is Still In My Leaking Heart.

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.

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

Never Interfere In A Girl And Boy Fight.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

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.

Last Night I Woke Up With Someone Squeezing My Hand. It Was My Other Hand.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 Wasn't Exposed To Art As I Was Growing Up, And Can't Recall The First Time I Saw A Work Of Art. However, I Remember Very Clearly A Vision I Had Of A Little Green Reindeer When I Was A Child, And Visions Emanate From The Same Mythical Area Where Painting Resides. Whatever The Reason, I Immediately Felt Comfortable Working With Visual Materials.

Like Spain, I Am Bound To The Past.

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

Any Unchecked Impulse Does, Within The Human Body And Psyche, Lead To The Destruction Of The Organism.

The Word Is Now A Virus.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Junk Is Not, Like Alcohol Or Weed, A Means To Increased Enjoyment Of Life. Junk Is Not A Kick. It Is A Way Of Life.

It's A Tract Against Capital Punishment In The Genre Of Swift's Modest Proposal. I Was Simply Following A Formula To Its Logical Conclusion. Some People Appear To Have Understood It. The Publication Of Naked Lunch In England Practically Coincided With Their Abolition Of Capital Punishment. The Book Obviously Had A Certain Effect.

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

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.

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.

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

Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.

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

Coincidence In Life

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

Life Is A Vacation From Two Eternities.

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

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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

I'm Definitely Antiscientist Because I Feel That Science Represents A Conspiracy To Impose As The Real And Only Universe, The Universe Of Scientists Themselves - They're Reality-addicts, They've Got To Have Things So Real So They Can Get Their Hands On It.

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 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.

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.

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

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

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

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

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.

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

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.

Sexual Arousal Results From The Repetition And Impact Of Image.

Shooting Is My Principal Pastime.

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.

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

A Functioning Police State Needs No Police.

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.

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

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

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.

Which Came First The Intestine Or The Tapeworm?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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.

(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.

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.

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

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.

For Any Species To Change, If They Are Unable And Are Unwilling To Do So - I Might, For Example, Have Suggested To The Dinosaurs That Heavy Armor And Great Size Was A Sinking Ship, And That They Do Well To Convert To Mammal Facilities - It Would Not Lie In My Power Or Desire To Reconvert A Reluctant Dinosaur.

Well, "disgusting" Doesn't Refer To The Books But To The Subjective Reaction Of The Person Making The Complaint. I Don't Think That Anything Is Disgusting Per Se. These Words "disgusting" And "filthy," Etc., Have Prevented Us From Undertaking Any Scientific Experimentation In Sexual Matters.

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

Naked Lunch Was From About A Thousand Pages Of Material. A Lot Of It Overflowed, Then, Into The Cut-up Trilogy Including Nova Express.

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.

I Know That Nature Designs That This Whole Continent, Not Merely These Thirty-six States, Shall Be, Sooner Or Later, Within The Magic Circle Of The American Union.

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

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.

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

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

What Are Americans? We've Got Everything From Sharecroppers To Atomic Physicist Here, And There's Certainly No Uniformity In Their Thought Processes. There's Very Little They Have In Common. In Fact, Americans Should We Say, Have Less In Common Than Any Other Nationality.

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

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.

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

"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.

In The Event Of Atomic War There Is A Tremendous Biological Advantage In The So-called Undeveloped Areas That Have A High Birth Rate And High Death Rate Because, Man, They Can Plow Under Those Mutations.

I Am Not A Person And I Am Not An Animal. There Is Something I Am Here For Something I Must Do Before I Can Go.

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.

Whatever Happened To God's Justice? I Am Convinced That God Exist And God Is One Asshole.

Every Word Is Autobiographical, And Every Word Is Fiction.

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Difficult.

Finding Yourself

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Robert Green Ingersoll

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