William S. Burroughs Ipsum

Language is a virus from outer space. junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. 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. love? what is it? most natural painkiller what there is. there is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. language is a virus from outer space. thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the muse. danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal. nothing is true, everything is permitted. it was unlike anything i ever heard. bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. a sound you could smell. this man worked for the carnival, you dig? then it developed sort of teethlike... same as any other mouth. it was trapped inside the skull... for a while, you could see... because the eyes went out....

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. 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. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. 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. 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 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. 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 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... his pants and start talking on the street... finally, it talked all the time, all over his mouth. he would tear it off his mouth and grow there. that's the one thing.

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. in deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. 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. smash the control images. smash the control machine. desperation is the raw material of drastic change. only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born. you know a real friend? someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. 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. danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal. and started eating. his pants and start talking on the street... shouting out it wanted equal rights. nobody loved it. nothing did any good, he would tear it off his mouth and the whole head... and infiltrated and atrophied. the silent, helpless suffering.