William S. Burroughs Ipsum

A functioning police state needs no police. artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. the aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. the only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do. you can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. the question is frequently asked: why does a man become a drug addict? the answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. you don't wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. it takes at least three months' shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. and you don't really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. it took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. i think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. the questions, of course, could be asked: why did you ever try narcotics? why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? you become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. junk wins by default. i tried it as a matter of curiosity. i drifted along taking shots when i could score. i ended up hooked. most addicts i have talked to report a similar experience. they did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. they just drifted along until they got hooked. if you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict's special need. you don't decide to be an addict. one morning you wake up sick and you're an addict. (junky, prologue, p. xxxviii) it's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy. as a young child i wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. they lounged around singapore and rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. they sniffed cocaine in mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. 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. it was unlike anything i ever heard. bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. a sound you could smell. this man worked for the carnival, you dig? little raspy incurving hooks his pants and start talking on the street... you could hear him for blocks, around here anymore. he would tear it off his mouth so, finally, his mouth sealed over... would have amputated spontaneously that's the one thing it needed the eyes. and then finally as one judge said to another judge: be just. and if you can't be just, be arbitrary..

Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. 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. you know a real friend? someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. little raspy incurving hooks day and night. and there was no more feeling in them.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. in deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. the face of evil is always the face of total need. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. 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. 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. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. love is a haunting melody that i have never mastered, and i fear i never will. 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. love? what is it? most natural painkiller what there is. every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. 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... hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. day and night. nothing did any good, and the asshole said to him... "it is you who will shut up like a tadpole's tail he would tear it off his mouth so, finally, his mouth sealed over... that's the one thing give orders anymore. as one judge said to another judge: be just. and if you can't be just, be arbitrary..