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. 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. black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. casual curses are the most effective. hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside. the face of evil is always the face of total need. 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. 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) 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. 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. whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. i cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive. nothing is true, everything is permitted. and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. after a while, the ass started talking on its own. he would go in without anything prepared... and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. little raspy incurving hooks shouting out it wanted equal rights. day and night. beating at it with his fists... and sticking candles up it, but... "it is you who will shut up "because we don't need you like burning gasoline jelly and the whole head... sealed off. the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes. and there was no more feeling in them as one judge said to another judge: be just. and if you can't be just, be arbitrary..