William S. Burroughs Ipsum

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. nothing is true, everything is permitted. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. the aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. in my writing i am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and i see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed. perhaps all pleasure is only relief. the face of evil is always the face of total need. which came first the intestine or the tapeworm? nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death. 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. if i had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. 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 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? man is an artifact designed for space travel. he is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. it's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy. nothing is true, everything is permitted. open your mind and let the pictures out. 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. then it developed sort of teethlike... beating at it with his fists... and the pieces would stick to his hands... that's the one thing give orders anymore..

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. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. 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. desperation is the raw material of drastic change. only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. love? what is it? most natural painkiller what there is. 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) 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. thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. i am getting so far out one day i won't come back at all. it's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. nothing did any good, like a tadpole's tail he would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands... it was trapped inside the skull... for a while, you could see... and then finally out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief.... words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. they belong to anyone who can use them. loot the louvre! a bas l'originalit.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. 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. man is an artifact designed for space travel. he is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. 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 soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape. it is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical i mean intended to produce very definite results. paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. art is not an end in itself, any more than einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. like all formulae, art was originally functional, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from einstein's formulae. 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 there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. little raspy incurving hooks he thought this was cute at first you could hear him for blocks, screaming at it to shut up... after that, he began waking up all over his mouth. it needed the eyes. sealed off..