William S. Burroughs Ipsum

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. 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 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) 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. but the asshole would eat its way through screaming at it to shut up... "it is you who will shut up in the morning with transparentjelly... and the pieces would stick to his hands... and then finally as one judge said to another judge: be just. and if you can't be just, be arbitrary..

A functioning police state needs no police. the way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits. i am getting so far out one day i won't come back at all. perhaps all pleasure is only relief. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. 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. there are no innocent bystanders... what are they doing there in the first place? 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. i am getting so far out one day i won't come back at all. cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the muse. 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. then it developed sort of teethlike... and started eating. and it wanted to be kissed, screaming at it to shut up... and sticking candles up it, but... and the asshole said to him... "because we don't need you i can talk and eat and shit." after that, he began waking up he would tear it off his mouth and the whole head... that's the one thing nerve connections were blocked... so, the brain couldn't for a while, you could see... 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..

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. how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. casual curses are the most effective. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. there are no innocent bystanders... what are they doing there in the first place? 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. 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. i bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink... thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. the dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers 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... 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. nothing is true, everything is permitted. panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. that old feeling is still in my leaking heart. nothing did any good, except for the eyes, you dig? it needed the eyes..