William S. Burroughs Ipsum

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. the only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do. your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. 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. 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 couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. 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. cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the muse. as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape. like all pure creatures, cats are practical. 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 nothing is true, everything is permitted. and built an act around it... his pants and start talking on the street... you could hear him for blocks, and the asshole said to him... in the end, not me... because the eyes went out... and there was no more feeling in them junk turns the user into a plant. plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. junk is a pain killer. a plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. junk replaces the sex drive. seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. paranoia is just having the right information. all over america, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someone else's nose to prove they had been somewhere or done something. and i thought someday everyone in america will suddenly jump up and say, 'i don't take any shit!' and start pushing and cursing and clawing at the man next to him. there is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... i am a recording instrument... i do not presume to impose story plot continuity... insofar as i succeed in direct recording of certain areas of psychic process i may have limited function... i am not an entertainer... people have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. the shadow of death is on every face. thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome american guts;thanks for a continent to despoil and poison; thanks for indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger; thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot; thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes; thanks for the american dream to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through; thanks for the kkk; for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches; for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces; thanks for kill a queer for christ stickers; thanks for laboratory aids; thanks for prohibition and the war against drugs; thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business; thanks for a nation of finks--yes,thanks for all the memories all right, lets see your arms; you always were a headache and you always were a bore; thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams..

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. they'd be dead in two weeks. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. 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 nothing is true, everything is permitted. but the asshole would eat its way through you could hear him for blocks, "because we don't need you give orders anymore. when i become death. death is the seed from which i grow. and if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. is control controlled by its need to control? answer: yes. cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the muse. it cannot be done. you can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. human, allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable. o death where is thy sting? the man is never on time... evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in egypt. the egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (no evidence that such a thing happened with the mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) i don't think this is accurate. it is certainly not the whole story. cats didn't start as mousers. weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. i postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as familiars, and have never deviated from this function. in deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. it is as final as the mountains: a fact. there it is. when you realize it you cannot complain. death needs time for what it kills to grow in. like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey. a year later in tangier i heard she was dead. a john is different from a sucker. when you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. you give him nothing. a sucker is just to be taken but a john is different. you give him what he pays for. when you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too. after bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. it was a gruesome sight. i remember once he told me how he'd been propositioned by a queer who offered him twenty dollars. bill declined, saying "i don't think you would be very well satisfied." bill twitched his fleshless hips. "you should see me in the nude," he said. "i'm really cute. my characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why i'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. i have plenty of company..

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. junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. no sales talk necessary. the client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. the face of evil is always the face of total need. silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing. 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. thou shalt not be such a shit, you don't know you are one. after that, he began waking up like a tadpole's tail so, finally, his mouth sealed over... except for the eyes, you dig? it was trapped inside the skull... 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. like spain, i am bound to the past. last night i encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. i don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. it is very small, but can walk and talk "don't you want me?" again, i don't know how to care for the child. but i am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! it is the function of the guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy. happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. the people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. this thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. the only way i like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window. they say only love can create, so who the fuck could love up a centipede? he's got more love in him than i got. ever see a hot shot hit, kid? i saw the gimp catch one in philly. we rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. he never got the needle out of his arm. they don't if the shot is right. that's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. the look in his eyes when it hit --- kid, it was tasty. america is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. the american non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. the dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers. he kisses the d.s.'s hand thrusting his fingers into his mouth (the d.s. must feel his toothless gums) complaining he has lost teeth "inna thervith". "please boss man. i'll wipe your ass, i'll wash out your dirty condoms, i'll polish your shoes with the oil on my nose.....