William S. Burroughs Ipsum

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. 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. it was trapped inside the skull... of the brain behind the eyes..

. A functioning police state needs no police. 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. our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. 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. 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. junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. the cat does not offer services. the cat offers itself. of course he wants care and shelter. you don't buy love for nothing. there is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. it is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve. your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. there is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories. there are things i wish i could forget. you know a real friend? someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone. how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. 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. and built an act around it... his pants and start talking on the street... shouting out it wanted equal rights. screaming at it to shut up... beating at it with his fists... in the morning with transparentjelly... except for the eyes, you dig? that's the one thing it needed the eyes. the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes. the brain must have died....

Language is a virus from outer space. desperation is the raw material of drastic change. only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. 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. there couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. in deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. 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. a paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. there is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. it is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve. 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 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) artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. the face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. 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. 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. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. 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. and started eating. and built an act around it... but the asshole would eat its way through screaming at it to shut up... "it is you who will shut up i can talk and eat and shit." like burning gasoline jelly except for the eyes, you dig? and infiltrated and atrophied. of the brain behind the eyes..