Naked Lunch Quotes
"No society tolerates overt rejection of its basic tenets."
"The days glide by strung on a syringe with a long thread of blood."
"All the skill is going out of surgery. All the know-how and make-do."
"The way is long. Hard-ons and bring-downs are frequent."
"You can find out more about someone by talking than by listening."
"The data taken down is put on pegs to be used as toilet paper."
"The City is visited by epidemics of violence, and the untended dead are eaten by vultures in the streets."
"People eaten by unknown diseases watch the passerby with evil, knowing eyes."
"All medicine men use it in their practice to foretell the future, locate lost or stolen objects, to diagnose and treat illness, to name the perpetrator of a crime."
"Let's hope Old Xiuptutol don't wig and name one of the boys."
"Take a curare and relax. We got the fix in..."
"Images fall slow and silent like snow.... Serenity... All defenses fall... everything is free to enter or to go out.... Fear is simply impossible."
"The unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One..."
"Every lover had his special theme song which was perfect for him and rose to his climax."
"I got the health!... All the health! Enough health for the whole world, the whole fuckin world! I cure everybody!"
"Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer."
"The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer."
"Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action, to the complete parasitism of a virus."
"Though the delegates are carefully searched at the door, these gatherings invariably culminate in riots."
"Dying of shame is an accomplishment peculiar to Kwakiutl Indians and Americans -- others simply say 'Zat alors' or 'Son cosas de la vida' or 'Allah fucked me, the All Powerful....'"
"The only native in Interzone who is neither queer nor available is Andrew Keif's chauffeur, which is not affectation or perversity on Keif's part, but a useful pretext to break off relations with anyone he doesn't want to see."
"Everyone asks him to buy drinks and celebrate, but he laughs jovially and says, 'Fact is I can't afford to buy myself a drink. I already spent every kurd of it buying Penstrep for Ali's clap. He's down with it fore and aft again.'"
"The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated."
"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
"Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference."
"Why all this waste paper getting The People from one place to another? Perhaps to spare The Reader stress of sudden space shifts and keep him Gentle?"
"Talk paregoric, Sweet Thing, and I will hear."
"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."
"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'."
"Writers talk about the sweet-sick smell of death whereas any junky can tell you that death has no smell."
"The writer sees himself reading to the mirror as always... He must check now and again to reassure himself that The Crime Of Separate Action has not, is not, cannot occur."
"Anyone who has ever looked into a mirror knows what this crime is and what it means in terms of lost control when the reflection no longer obeys."
"I personally wish to terminate my services as of now in that I cannot continue to sell the raw materials of death."
"The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve."
"Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book.. Black insect lusts open into vast, other planet landscapes.... Abstract concepts, bare as algebra, narrow down to a black turd or a pair of aging cajones."
"This is Revelation and Prophecy of what I can pick up without FM on my 1920 crystal set with antennae of jissom.... Gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the Hash bulb of orgasm."
"You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point.... I have written many prefaces. They atrophy and amputate spontaneously."
"I woke up with the taste of metal in my mouth back from the dead."