William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs 

“Be just and if you can’t be just, be arbitrary.” (Pg 5)

“Want to cure anybody of anything, find out who doesn’t have it.” (Pg 29)

“The addict regards his body impersonally as an instrument to absorb the medium in which he lives, evaluates his tissue with the cold hands of a horse trader.” (Pg 57)

“Nothing can ever be accomplished on the verbal level.” (Pg 74)

“You can find out more about someone by talking than by listening.” (Pg 74)

“Man will do anything for publicity.” (Pg 87)

“Now every child knows there is one law of gambling: winning and losing come in streaks. Plunge when you win, fold when you lose.” (Pg 107-108)

“The human body is scandalously inefficient.” (Pg 110)

“What I’m getting at, Doc, is how can you expect a body to be healthy with its brains washed out.” (Pg 116-117)

“You see control can never be a means to any practical end... It can never be a means to anything but more control.” (Pg 137)

“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.” (Pg 141)

“Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.” (Pg 179)

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing…” (Pg 184)

“If God made anything better he kept it for himself.” (Pg 194)