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The Idea Was That We Would Decide The Order When We Looked At The Proofs. I Remember Brion Gysin Saying "well, Why Change It? It's Perfect The Way It Is, The Way It Came From The Printer." Made One Major Change, That Is, The First Chapter That Came From The Printers, Which Would Be The Beginning, We Moved To The End. The First Chapter Became The Last Chapter. There's No Actual Cutups In Naked Lunch.

-William S. Burroughs

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The Idea Was That

William S. Burroughs

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The Idea Was That We Would Decide The Order When We Looked At The Proofs. I Remember Brion Gysin Saying "well, Why Change It? It's Perfect The Way It Is, The Way It Came From The Printer." Made One Major Change, That Is, The First Chapter That Came From The Printers, Which Would Be The Beginning, We Moved To The End. The First Chapter Became The Last Chapter. There's No Actual Cutups In Naked Lunch.

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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.

I Think Anybody Incapable Of Changing His Mind Is Crazy.

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.

How I Hate Those Who Are Dedicated To Producing Conformity.

A Paranoid Is Someone Who Has All The Facts.

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

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.

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

Funny Sarcastic

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.

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

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

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

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

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.

"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.

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.

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

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

The Orgasmic Death Gimmick Is Rather Complicated. It Could Be Called The Whole Birth-death Cycle Of Action, Persuading People That Birth And Death Are Realities.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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

Every Word Is Autobiographical, And Every Word Is Fiction.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

One Very Important Aspect Of Art Is That It Makes People Aware Of What They Know And Don’t Know They Know... Once The Breakthrough Is Made, There Is A Permanent Expansion Of Awareness. But There Is Always A Reaction Of Rage, Of Outrage, At The First Breakthrough... So The Artist, Then, Expands Awareness. And Once The Breakthrough Is Made, This Becomes Part Of The General Awareness.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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

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

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Difficult.

Finding Yourself

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

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

What A Horrible Loutish Planet This Is. The Dominant Species Consists Of Sadistic Morons, Faces Bearing The Hideous Lineaments Of Spiritual Famine Swollen With Stupid Hate. Hopeless Rubbish.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I Feel That Opiates - I Include Opium And All Its Derivatives, Such As Morphine, Heroin, Pantopon, Etc. - Are Quite Useless For Any Sort Of Creative Work, Useful Though They May Be For Routine Work. Much Of The Hard Physical Work In The Far East Is Done By Opium Addicts.

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.

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."

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.

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

The Study Of Thinking Machines Teaches Us More About The Brain Than We Can Learn By Introspective Methods. Western Man Is Externalizing Himself In The Form Of Gadgets.

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

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.

Silence Is Only Frightening To People Who Are Compulsively Verbalizing.

I Don't Know What Falling In Love For Me Is. The Concept Of Romantic Love Arose In The Middle Ages. Now Remember, The Arabs Don't Even Have A Word For Love-that Is, A Word For Love Apart From Physical Attraction Or Sex. And This Separation Of Love And Sex Is A Western Concept, A Christian Concept. As To What Falling In Love Means, I'm Uncertain. Love, Well, It Means Simply Physical Attraction And Liking A Person At The Same Time.

Falling In Love

I 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'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.

Visual Art And Writing Don't Exist On An Aesthetic Hierarchy That Positions One Above The Other, Because Each Is Capable Of Things The Other Can't Do At All. Sometimes One Picture Is Equal To 30 Pages Of Discourse, Just As There Are Things Images Are Completely Incapable Of Communicating.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Beat Generation

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

I've Seen Villages In South America With No Police Whatever. Then The Cops Would Arrive, Then The Sanitary Inspectors, And Before You Know It They've Got All The Problems - Crime, Juvenile Delinquency, The Whole Works - Just Like Us.

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

Like Spain, I Am Bound To The Past.

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.

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.

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

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

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.

Thanks For The American Dream, To Vulgarize And Falsify Until The Bare Lies Shine Through. Thanks For A Country Where Nobody's Allowed To Mind Their Own Business.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Telling The Truth

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Asking Questions

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.

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.

Nothing Happens By Coincidence.

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

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.

Society Is Cancerous And Bureaucracy Is Its Cancer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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

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

Bizarre And Engrossingly Disturbing, Naked Lunch, Finds Truth In Madness.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

You See, Should I Stand In Front Of A Landscape And Paint It, I'm Completely Ignoring The Factor Of Time. While I Am Painting It, It's Changing, Clouds Are Changing, All Sorts Of Things. So There's The Myth There Of Someone Creating In A Timeless Vacuum.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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

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.

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.

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

By The Flaws In The Picture The Truth Will Emerge.

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

In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality.

We Should Exterminate All Rational Thought.

Rational Thought

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Many Doctors Are Drawn To This Profession (psychology) Because They Have An Innate Deficiency Of Insight Into The Motives, Feelings And Thoughts Of Others, A Deficiency They Hope To Remedy By Ingesting Masses Of Data.

If 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'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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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Pierre Schaeffer

Emily Greene Balch

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