William S. Burroughs Ipsum

Our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. the cat does not offer services. the cat offers itself. of course he wants care and shelter. you don't buy love for nothing. smash the control images. smash the control machine. 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. thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. 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. as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape. nothing is true, everything is permitted. and built an act around it... day and night. after that, he began waking up like a tadpole's tail that the asshole couldn't do was see. give orders anymore. because the eyes went out....

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. anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. language is a virus from outer space. writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. there are things i wish i could forget. there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. and started eating. he thought this was cute at first nothing did any good, it needed the eyes. it was trapped inside the skull....

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. sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. you can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. 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. in the u.s. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom. after one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say i want to see the manager. 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) smash the control images. smash the control machine. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. 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 like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. i cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive. we are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of true romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. i do not say lonely -- at least, not all the time -- but essentially, and finally, alone. this is what makes your self-respect so important, and i don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness 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. little raspy incurving hooks and started eating. i can talk and eat and shit." after that, he began waking up would have amputated spontaneously it needed the eyes. and there was no more feeling in them.