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. our national drug is alcohol. we tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. nothing is true, everything is permitted. black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. casual curses are the most effective. 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. if i had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. love is a haunting melody that i have never mastered, and i fear i never will. love? what is it? most natural painkiller what there is. there is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. there are no innocent bystanders... what are they doing there in the first place? the face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. 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... how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. little raspy incurving hooks but the asshole would eat its way through nobody loved it. nothing did any good, and the asshole said to him... in the end, not me... all over his mouth. nerve connections were blocked... so, the brain couldn't sealed off. the brain must have died... because the eyes went out... 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.

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. 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. how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. 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. be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. the face of evil is always the face of total need. which came first the intestine or the tapeworm? 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. if i had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. the dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. 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. 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. like all pure creatures, cats are practical. a cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. finally, it talked all the time, day and night. "it is you who will shut up in the end, not me... after that, he began waking up and the pieces would stick to his hands... that the asshole couldn't do was see. nerve connections were blocked... 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..

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. 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. if i had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. 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 never do business with a religious son-of-a-bitch. his word ain't worth a shit -- not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal. there is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. 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... 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. every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage. knowing you might not make it... in that knowledge courage is born. the best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility. there is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. how i hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. nothing is true, everything is permitted. that old feeling is still in my leaking heart. little raspy incurving hooks his pants and start talking on the street... it would get drunk, too, and have crying jags. and sticking candles up it, but... in the end, not me... "because we don't need you around here anymore. so, the brain couldn't than a crab's eye at the end of a stalk. 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.