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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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What Originally Established The

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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Nothing Happens By Coincidence.

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Like All Pure Creatures, Cats Are Practical.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.

The Photo Collage Is A Way To Travel That Must Be Used With Skill And Precision If We Are To Arrive... The Collage As A Flexible Hieroglyph Language Of Juxtaposition: A Collage Makes A Statement.

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

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.

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.'

Open Your Mind And Let The Pictures Out

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

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

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

The Word Is Now A Virus.

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

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

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

That Old Feeling Is Still In My Leaking Heart.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

When You Stop Growing You Start Dying.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Line Between Inner And Outer Landscapes Is Breaking Down. Earthquakes Can Result From Seismic Upheavals Within The Human Mind. The Whole Random Universe Of The Industrial Age Is Breaking Down Into Cryptic Fragments.

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

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.

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

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

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There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

Time Is What Death Needs To Grow People In.

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.

There Are No Innocent Bystanders.

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.

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.

In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality.

Forward Steps Are Made By Giving Up Old Armor Because Words Are Built Into You - In The Soft Typewriter Of The Womb You Do Not Realize The Word-armor You Carry; For Example, When You Read This Page Your Eyes Move Irresistibly From Left To Right Following The Words That You Have Been Accustomed To.

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.

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

We Must Find Out What Words Are And How They Function. They Become Images When Written Down, But Images Of Words Repeated In The Mind And Not Of The Image Of The Thing Itself.

An Addict Never Stops Growing. Stupider.

Any Belief In Creators Or Purpose Is Wishful Thinking. And When You Point Out That Perhaps All Thinking Is Wishful, Reactions Of Intense Irritation Give Evidence That We Are Not Dealing With Logic But With Faith.

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

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

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

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

In Exorcism, A Verbal Argument Can Never Do Anything. You Can't Ever Beat The Entity In A Verbal Argument Because That's What He Wants. It's Only Through A Confront, A Non-verbal Confront, That Anything Happens. It Has To Be Non-verbal.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

We Should Exterminate All Rational Thought.

Rational Thought

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

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

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

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

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.

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 Do An Awful Lot Of Bad Writing In Order To Do Any Good Writing. Incredibly Bad. I Think It Would Be Very Interesting To Make A Collection Of Some Of The Worst Writing By Good Writers.

Never Interfere In A Girl And Boy Fight.

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.

The Forward Step Must Be Made In Silence. We Detach Ourselves From Word Forms - This Can Be Accomplished By Substituting For Words, Letters, Concepts, Verbal Concepts, Other Modes Of Expressions: For Example, Color.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

Wisdom Experience

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Think Anybody Incapable Of Changing His Mind Is Crazy.

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

Everything Jack Says Is To Be Taken With Considerable Reserve.

Like Spain, I Am Bound To The Past.

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

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

(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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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 Cat Does Not Offer Services. The Cat Offers Itself.

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

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.

Death Needs Time For What It Kills To Grow In.

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

Second Amendment

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

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.

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

Sexual Arousal Results From The Repetition And Impact Of Image.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Difficult.

Finding Yourself

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.

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

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.

Ever See A Hot Shot Hit, Kid? I Saw The Gimp Catch One In Philly. We Rigged His Room With A One-way Whorehouse Mirror And Charged A Sawski To Watch It. He Never Got The Needle Out Of His Arm. They Don't If The Shot Is Right. That's The Way They Find Them, Dropper Full Of Clotted Blood Hanging Out Of A Blue Arm. The Look In His Eyes When It Hit --- Kid, It Was Tasty.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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