William S. Burroughs Ipsum

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. nothing is true, everything is permitted. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. 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) there are no innocent bystanders... what are they doing there in the first place? writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. there are things i wish i could forget. in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. shouting out it wanted equal rights. finally, it talked all the time, and sticking candles up it, but... after that, he began waking up like a tadpole's tail and the pieces would stick to his hands... of the brain behind the eyes. and then finally.

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. after one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'i want to see the manager.' artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. the aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. the face of evil is always the face of total need. the only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. language is a virus from outer space. artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. 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. 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. in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. after a while, the ass started talking on its own. he would go in without anything prepared... and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. he thought this was cute at first and it wanted to be kissed, you could hear him for blocks, would have amputated spontaneously of the brain behind the eyes..

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. after one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'i want to see the manager.' 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. nothing is true, everything is permitted. the aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. perhaps all pleasure is only relief. which came first the intestine or the tapeworm? 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. after one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say i want to see the manager. writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. there are things i wish i could forget. cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the muse. 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. 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. same as any other mouth. i can talk and eat and shit." in the morning with transparentjelly... like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. he would tear it off his mouth and the whole head... except for the eyes, you dig? so, the brain couldn't of the brain behind the eyes. the brain must have died... because the eyes went out....