Great Throughts Treasury

"You can't oppose something intellectually that is overwhelming you emotionally."

"All going, to make way for more and more devalued human stock, with less and less of the wild spark, the priceless ingredient – energy into matter. A vast mudslide of soulless sludge."

"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."

"A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence."

"A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering."

"A coprophage calls for a plate, shits on it and eats the shit, exclaiming, Mmmm, that's my rich substance."

"A chaotic situation is always deliberately produced. Ask yourself who or what sort of creature could benefit from such a situation."

"A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands--the lymph glands that is, of course--when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted, simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion--just a minute, Doctor Kildare, this isn't your script. I might well destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen--Bobo, we called her--who taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love."

"A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased."

"A John is different from a sucker. When you're with a sucker you're on alert all the time. You give him nothing. A sucker is just to be taken but a John is different. You give him what he pays for. When you're with him you enjoy yourself and you want him to enjoy himself too."

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on."

"A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start. A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait."

"A lot of people made quick easy money during the War and for several years after. Any business was good, just as any stock is good on a rising market. People thought they were sharp operators, when actually they were just riding a lucky streak. Now the Valley is in a losing streak and only the big operators can ride it out. In the Valley economic laws work out like a formula in high school algebra, since there is no human element to interfere. 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. All they have to do is sit and the money comes pouring in. You have to get up with the Big Holders or drop out and take any job they hand you. The middle class is getting the squeeze, and only one in a thousand will go up. The Big Holders are the house, and the small farmers are the players. The player goes broke if he keeps on playing, and the farmer has to play or lose to the Government by default."

"A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So let?s dispense with this originality fetish? Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original."

"A writer's will is the winds of dead calm in the Western Lands. Point way out he can start stirring of the sail. Writer, where are you going? To write. Here we are in texts already written on the sky. Where he doesn't need to write anymore. A slight seismic with the cat book. Always remember, the work is the mainsail to reach the Western Lands. The texts sing. Everything is grass and bushes, a desert or a maze of texts. Here you are ... never use the same door twice. Sky in all directions ... on the word for word. The word for word is word. The western sail stirs candles on 1920 country club table. Each page is a door to everything is permitted. The fragile lifeboat between this and that. Your words are the sails."

"Abandon all nations, the planet drifts to random insect doom."

"According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext."

"Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo -- and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way."

"A Johnson honors his obligations. His word is good and he is a good man to do business with. A Johnson minds his own business. He is not a snoopy self-righteous trouble-making person. A Johnson will give help when needed."

"A ghost in daylight on a crowded street."

"A functioning police state needs no police."

"A paranoid man is a man with all the facts."

"A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all."

"After Bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. It was a gruesome sight. I remember once he told me how he'd been propositioned by a queer who offered him twenty dollars. Bill declined, saying I don't think you would be very well satisfied. Bill twitched his fleshless hips. You should see me in the nude, he said. I'm really cute."

"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager.''"

"After the shot he collapsed on the bed and lay there inert, but something was stirring in his spine from neck to the tail - and now pieces tore loose in the eggs and then a red, glistening head emerges in reeking yellow slime - and then the whole centipede crawling out quick."

"All abilities are paid for with disabilities. Perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. Insight into one area involves blind spots in another. I could not have done what I have done as a writer had I been a gifted mathematician or physicist."

"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."

"All knowledge all discoveries belong to everybody? All knowledge all discoveries belong to you by right. It is time to demand what belongs to you."

"All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someone else's nose to prove they had been somewhere or done something. And I thought someday everyone in America will suddenly jump up and say, 'I don't take any shit!' and start pushing and cursing and clawing at the man next to him."

"All the filth and horror, fear, hate disease and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands."

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn?t do it. I sure as hell wouldn?t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."

"All political movements are basically anti-creative ? since a political movement is a form of war. There?s no place for impractical dreamers around here, that?s what they always say. Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around. As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers. Both favor alcohol and are against pot."

"All the role models are being exposed and this is good because role models are shit. The quicker we exposed them the better. The whole concept of role models is frightful! You gotta make your own role."

"All you cat lovers, remember all the millions of cats mewling through the world's rooms lay all their hopes and trust in you."

"America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting."

"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers."

"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."

"An addict never stops growing. Stupider."

"And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing."

"And there are my cats, engaged in a ritual that goes back thousands of years, tranquilly licking themselves after the meal. Practical animals, they prefer to have others provide the food ... some of them do. There must have been a split between the cats who accepted domestication and those who did not."

"Anslinger's reefer madness did not caution even the seeds of efficient, intelligent, ruthless action ... The same goes for Hoover, sniveling Nixon, the whole miserable, wretchedly evil lot of them . . . not a man among them who could have pulled off a successful coup in a banana republic."

"Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith."

"Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means."

"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."

"As I was walking past Tony Pastor's I saw Pat, the lesbian bouncer, throw a drunken young sailor out into the street. The sailor said, ?That place is full of fucking queers. He swung at the air and nearly fell on his face,? then he staggered away, muttering to himself."

"As one judge said to another judge: ?Be just. And if you can?t be just, be arbitrary.?"

"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact."

"Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your I is an illusion. You have to give something called an I before you speak of what the I believes."

"As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape."