William S. Burroughs Ipsum

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. 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. the first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible 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. nobody loved it. same as any other mouth. i can talk and eat and shit." nerve connections were blocked....

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 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. there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. and sticking candles up it, but... and grow there. and the whole head... for a while, you could see....

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. i am getting so far out one day i won't come back at all. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. 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. 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) 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 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... like all pure creatures, cats are practical. danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal. 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 nobody loved it. same as any other mouth. and the asshole said to him... i can talk and eat and shit." in the morning with transparentjelly... he would tear it off his mouth so, finally, his mouth sealed over... that's the one thing so, the brain couldn't for a while, you could see... of the brain behind the eyes. and there was no more feeling in them 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..