William S. Burroughs Ipsum

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. sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. perhaps all pleasure is only relief. the face of evil is always the face of total need. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. did i ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? his whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. in the end, not me... for a while, you could see... and there was no more feeling in them.

. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. the face of evil is always the face of total need. language is a virus from outer space. 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. you know a real friend? someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. that old feeling is still in my leaking heart. and the whole head... nerve connections were blocked... give orders anymore. sealed off..

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. 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. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. a psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on. never do business with a religious son-of-a-bitch. his word ain't worth a shit -- not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. 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. 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. panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. it was unlike anything i ever heard. bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. a sound you could smell. this man worked for the carnival, you dig? then it developed sort of teethlike... and started eating. but the asshole would eat its way through beating at it with his fists... and sticking candles up it, but... in the morning with transparentjelly... so, finally, his mouth sealed over... sealed off. the silent, helpless suffering the brain must have died... than a crab's eye at the end of a stalk..