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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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The Consciousness-expanding Drugs -

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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

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.

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

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

I Think Anybody Incapable Of Changing His Mind Is Crazy.

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.

The Dream Is A Spontaneous Happening And Therefore Dangerous To A Control System Set-up By The Non-dreamers

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

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

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

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

Most Of The Trouble In This World Has Been Caused By Folks Who Can't Mind Their Own Business, Because They Have No Business Of Their Own To Mind, Any More Than A Smallpox Virus Has.

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

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

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?

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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

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

Nothing Happens By Coincidence.

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

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.

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

Junk Turns The User Into A Plant. Plants Do Not Feel Pain Since Pain Has No Function In A Stationary Organism. Junk Is A Pain Killer. A Plant Has No Libido In The Human Or Animal Sense. Junk Replaces The Sex Drive. Seeding Is The Sex Of The Plant And The Function Of Opium Is To Delay Seeding. Perhaps The Intense Discomfort Of Withdrawal Is The Transition From Plant Back To Animal, From A Painless, Sexless, Timeless State Back To Sex And Pain And Time, From Death Back To Life.

The Way To Kill A Man Or A Nation Is To Cut Off His Dreams, The Way The Whites Are Taking Care Of The Indians: Killing Their Dreams, Their Magic, Their Familiar Spirits.

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.

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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.

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

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.

There Is Nothing More Provocative Than Minding Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

Minding My Own Business

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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.

Open Your Mind And Let The Pictures Out

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.

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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

He [samuel Beckett] Is Great, A Very Great Writer. Any Modern Writer Is Bound To Be Influenced By [james] Joyce. Of Course, By Beckett As Well.

I 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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Beat Generation

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

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

I 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.

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

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

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

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

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.'

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.

There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Face Of "evil" Is Always The Face Of Total Need. A Dope Fiend Is A Man In Total Need Of Dope. Beyond A Certain Frequency Need Knows Absolutely No Limit Or Control. In The Words Of Total Need: "wouldn't You?" Yes You Would. You Would Lie, Cheat, Inform On Your Friends, Steal, Do Anything To Satisfy Total Need. Because You Would Be In A State Of Total Sickness, Total Possession, And Not In A Position To Act In Any Other Way. Dope Fiends Are Sick People Who Cannot Act Other Than They Do. A Rabid Dog Cannot Choose But Bite.

The 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.

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.

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

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.

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

Consider The Impasse Of A One-god Universe. He Is All-knowing And All-powerful. He Can't Go Anywhere, Since He Is Already Everywhere. He Can't Do Anything, Since The Act Of Doing Presupposes Opposition. His Universe Is Irrevocably Thermodynamic, Having No Friction By Definition. So, He Has To Create Friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, To Keep His Dying Show On The Road.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I Had Not Taken A Bath In A Year Nor Changed My Clothes Or Removed Them Except To Stick A Needle Every Hour In The Fibrous Grey Wooden Flesh Of Heroin Addiction. I Did Absolutely Nothing.

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.

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.

Silence Is Only Frightening To People Who Are Compulsively Verbalizing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.

Sexual Arousal Results From The Repetition And Impact Of Image.

People Have Nothing To Say, But They Are Afraid Of Saying Nothing, So What They Do Say Comes Out Flat And Vapid And Meaningless. The Shadow Of Death Is On Every Face.

Shadow Of Death

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

Wisdom Experience

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

Funny Sarcastic

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

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

Kerouac And I Are Not Real At All. The Only Thing About A Writer Is That He Has Written, And Not His So-called Life. 'and We (will) All Die And The Stars Will Go Out, One After Another.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

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'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.

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

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.

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

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

There Are No Innocent Bystanders.

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.

I Bear My Burden Proudly For All To See, To Conquer Prejudice And Ignorance And Hate With Knowledge And Sincerity And Love. Whenever You Are Threatened By A Hostile Presence, You Emit A Thick Cloud Of Love Like An Octopus Squirts Out Ink.

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

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.

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

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

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

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

According To The Legend An Evil Old Doctor, Who Called Himself God And Us Dogs, Created The First Boy In His Adolescent Image. The Boy Peopled The Garden With Male Phantoms That Rose From His Ejaculations. This Angered God, Who Was Getting On In Years. He Decided It Endangered His Position As Creator. So He Crept Upon The Boy And Anaesthetized Him And Made Eve From His Rib. Henceforth All Creation Of Beings Would Process Through Female Channels. But Some Of Adam's Phantoms Refused To Let God Near Them Under Any Pretext.

The 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.

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.

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

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.

There Is Only One Thing A Writer Can Write About: What Is In Front Of His Senses At The Moment Of Writing... I Am A Recording Instrument... I Do Not Presume To Impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar As I Succeed In Direct Recording Of Certain Areas Of Psychic Process I May Have Limited Function... I Am Not An Entertainer.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change, And Not The Political Legislators Who Implement Change After The Fact.

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

I Like The Idea Of Generalizing The Narcotic Thing By Making It Black Meat Addiction.

Like Many Nonconformist And Beat Generation Writers, William S. Burroughs Takes The Outcasts Of Society As His Theme.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Paranoid Is Someone Who Has All The Facts.

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

Perhaps All Pleasure Is Only Relief.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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