William S. Burroughs on Family

"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."

"Brion Gysin, Tangier Beat Generation, Joe Ambrose, Joujouka"

"No job too dirty for a fucking scientist."

"The relation between an O.A. and his R.C. 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."

"Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate. I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. ‘"

"As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be writers because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."

"“Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony."