85 quotes
Junk is an inoculation of death that keeps the body in a condition of emergency
Junkie (1953)
Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? "And here is my good big centipede!" If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
The Western Lands (1987)
I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.
The Wild Boys (1971)
You see control can never be a means to any practical end. ... Control can never be a means to anything but more control ... like Junk.
Naked Lunch (1959)
Sodomy is as old as the human species.
Junkie (1953)
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.
The Cat Inside (1986)
The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. 'The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.'
Naked Lunch (1959)
Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke.
Junkie (1953)
Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.
The Western Lands (1987)
My advice is to get a good agent and a good tax accountant if you ever make any money, and remember, you can't eat fame. And you can't write unless you want to write, and you can't want to unless you feel like it.
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
Many so called primitives are afraid of cameras. They think it can capture their soul and take it away. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, sexual intensity, a sexual intensity of pursuit.
Queer: A Novel (1985)
Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.
Naked Lunch (1959)
You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative
Naked Lunch (1959)
Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out.
Naked Lunch (1959)
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.
Queer: A Novel (1985)
You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. ... We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus.
The Place Of Dead Roads (1983)
England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
The relation between an O.A. (Oblique Addict) and his R.C. (Recharge Connection) is so intense that they can only endure each other’s company for brief and infrequent intervals—I mean aside from recharge meets, when all personal contact is eclipsed by recharge process.
Naked Lunch (1959)
I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The question "Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?" should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.
Lois A. Michel (1968)
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train...
Naked Lunch (1959)