85 quotes
You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
Junkie (1953)
The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
Naked Lunch (1959)
"Sit down on your ass, or what's left of it after four years in the navy."
Queer: A Novel (1985)
A ghost in daylight on a crowded street.
Junkie (1953)
1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.
Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa’s face.
Naked Lunch (1959)
Concession is another control bind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street.
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
So 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.
I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed than without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement.
Junkie (1953)
Coke is pure kick. It lifts you straight up, a mechanical lift that starts leaving you as soon as you feel it
Junkie (1953)
Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
The Soft Machine (1961)
I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.
Junkie (1953)
When you stop growing you start dying.
Junkie (1953)
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
Junkie (1953)
Any imposition of government censorship on the media is a step in the direction of State control, a step which big money is most reluctant to take.
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a "drag" or a "bring down," you can't do business with them.
Junkie (1953)
The very rich are getting richer and all the others are going broke. The big holders are not shrewd or ruthless or enterprising. They don't have to say or think anything.
Junkie (1953)
'Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned.' Convert all available stocks of morphine to apomorphine. Chemists, work round the clock on variation and synthesis of the apomorphine formulae.
Nova Express (1968)
The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable.
Queer: A Novel (1985)
All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.