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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.

-William S. Burroughs

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You Know, They Ask

William S. Burroughs

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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.

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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.

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

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

Funny Sarcastic

I Have No Message To Give The Politicians Of The World. They're All Completely Addicted To Promiscuous Verbalization And I'm Quite Sure They Would Not Be At All Interested In Hearing About Cut-ups And Hieroglyphics And Still Less Interested To Hear About Silence.

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

Silence Is Only Frightening To People Who Are Compulsively Verbalizing.

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.

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

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

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

Out Of The Closets And Into The Museums, Libraries, Architectural Monuments, Concert Halls, Bookstores, Recording Studios And Film Studios Of The World. Everything Belongs To The Inspired And Dedicated Thief…. Words, Colors, Light, Sounds, Stone, Wood, Bronze Belong To The Living Artist. They Belong To Anyone Who Can Use Them. Loot The Louvre! A Bas L’originalité, The Sterile And Assertive Ego That Imprisons Us As It Creates. Vive Le Vol-pure, Shameless, Total. We Are Not Responsible. Steal Anything In Sight.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

The Planet Drifts To Random Insect Doom.

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

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.

When You Cut Into The Present The Future Leaks Out.

Mr. Bradley-mr. Martin Is Two People Because It Is A Statement Of The Impasse Of Dualistic Universe Which He Has Created, They Have Created. I Think That Any Dualistic Universe Ends In Nova. Mr. Bradley-mr. Martin Is A Kind Of God. A God Of Stupidity, Cowardice, Ugliness.

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.

Changes... Can Only Be Effected By Alterations In The Original. The Only Thing Not Prerecorded In A Prerecorded Universe Are The Prerecordings Themselves. The Copies Can Only Repeat Themselves Word For Word. A Virus Is A Copy. You Can Pretty It Up, Cut It Up, Scramble It - It Will Reassemble In The Same Form.

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

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space.

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.

Which Came First The Intestine Or The Tapeworm?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Open Your Mind And Let The Pictures Out

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

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.

Smash The Control Images. Smash The Control Machine.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Perhaps All Pleasure Is Only Relief.

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

Modern Man Has Lost The Option Of Silence.

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.

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

I 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Asking Questions

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.

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

You See, Control Can Never Be A Means To Any Practical End...it Can Never Be A Means To Anything But More Control...like Junk.

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

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

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

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.

In Deep Sadness There Is No Place For Sentimentality.

I Feel That Any Form Of So Called Psychotherapy Is Strongly Contraindicated For Addicts. The Question Why Did You Start Using Narcotics In The First Place? Should Never Be Asked. It Is Quite As Irrelevant To Treatment As It Would Be To Ask A Malarial Patient Why He Went To A Malarial Area.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Now What Sort Of Man Or Woman Or Monster Would Stroke A Centipede I Have Ever Seen? And Here Is My Good Big Centipede! If Such A Man Exists, I Say Kill Him Without More Ado. He Is A Traitor To The Human Race.

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.

Gentle Reader, The Fountain Of Youth Is Radioactive, And Those Who Imbibe Its Poisonous Heavy Waters Will Suffer The Hideous Fate Of Decaying Metal. Yet Almost Without Exception, The Wretched Idiot Inhabitants Of Our Benighted Planet Would Gulp Down This Radioactive Excrement If It Were Offered.

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

Admittedly, A Homosexual Can Be Conditioned To React Sexually To A Woman, Or To An Old Boot For That Matter. In Fact, Both Homo - And Heterosexual Experimental Subjects Have Been Conditioned To React Sexually To An Old Boot, And You Can Save A Lot Of Money That Way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Beat Generation

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.

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

A Functioning Police State Needs No Police.

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.

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.

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

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

Every Word Is Autobiographical, And Every Word Is Fiction.

Truth Is Used To Vitalize A Statement Rather Than Devitalize It. Truth Implies More Than A Simple Statement Of Fact. "i Don't Have Any Whiskey," May Be A Fact But It Is Not A Truth.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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 See Painting As An Evocative Magic, And There Must Always Be A Random Factor In Magic, One Which Must Be Constantly Changed And Renewed.

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.

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.

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

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

There's No Place For Impractical Dreamers Around Here.

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

Sexual Arousal Results From The Repetition And Impact Of Image.

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

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.

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

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.

Paranoia Is Just Having The Right Information.

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

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

Artists To My Mind Are The Real Architects Of Change.

For Instance, They [the Federal Narcotics Bureau ] Give Out That Marijuana Is A Harmful And Habit-forming Drug, And It Simply Isn't. They Claim That You Can Get Addicted To Opiates With One Shot, And You Can't. They Over-estimate The Physical Bad Effects, And So Forth.

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

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

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

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

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.

An Addict Never Stops Growing. Stupider.

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

It Is Thought That The Virus Is A Degeneration From A More Complex Life Form. It May At One Time Have Been Capable Of Independent Life. Now Has Fallen To The Borderline Between Living And Dead Matter. It Can Exhibit Living Qualities Only In A Host, By Using The Life Of Another-the Renunciation Of Life Itself, A Falling Towards Inorganic, Inflexible Machine, Towards Dead Matter

I Took A Shot Of Morphine, Liked It, And Eventually Became Addicted. It Takes Quite A While. It Took Me Three Months The First Time. This Nonsense Of People Becoming Addicted With One Shot Is Medically Unsound.

I Feel That The Change, The Mutation In Consciousness, Will Occur Spontaneously Once Certain Pressures Now In Operation Are Removed. I Feel That The Principal Instrument Of Monopoly And Control That Prevents Expansion Of Consciousness Is The Word Lines Controlling Thought, Feeling And Apparent Sensory Impressions Of The Human Host.

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Too Perfect To Be Sexually Attractive.

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.

We Should Exterminate All Rational Thought.

Rational Thought

If All Pleasure Is Relief From Tension, Junk Affords Relief From The Whole Life Process, In Disconnecting The Hypothalamus, Which Is The Center Of Psychic Energy And Libido.

All Abilities Are Paid For With Disabilities. Perfect Health May Entail The Heavy Toll Of Bovine Stupidity. Insight Into One Area Involves Blind Spots In Another.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

By The Flaws In The Picture The Truth Will Emerge.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Hallucinogens Produce Visionary States, Sort Of, But Morphine And Its Derivatives Decrease Awareness Of Inner Processes, Thoughts And Feelings. They Are Pain Killers; Pure And Simple. They Are Absolutely Contraindicated For Creative Work, And I Include In The Lot Alcohol, Morphine, Barbiturates, Tranquilizers The Whole Spectrum Of Sedative Drugs.

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

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

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.

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

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

There Are No Innocent Bystanders.

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.

Sometimes Paranoia's Just Having All The Facts.

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